Kids undergo a large amount of pressure and stress during their school exams, which can often become quite overwhelming (to much) for them. It may be the first experience of stress, at this level, they have ever experienced and therefore quite frightening. Yes, you may say that it's all a part of growing up and therefore good lessons for them to learn, and to an extent I agree with you. However, it's important to learn how to prepare for life's challenges so that they aren't overwhelming or scary and so that we are able to manage them the best we can.

    Here are some tips you can use during your kids exam time.

    Break their revision plan down into small parts. Doing this will help transform what once seemed like a huge impossible task into a more manageable one.

    Help them arrange properly so that the subjects they like the least (perhaps ones that require more time and effort) are worked on first; once they are out of the way, it will help reduce the worry.

    Plan week on week to make sure they are on track. Ticking items of a list each week will help them to feel good about themselves and their progress.

    Create rewards for all the ticks - a favourite TV programme, a delicious snack, an hour's surfing the Internet, computer games or whatever it was that they enjoy the most. This will encourage them to carry on and make them feel good.

    Think of strategies on how to deal with exams calmly so their anxieties don't get the better of them.

    Talk about times in their lives when they had been successful at something and look at the qualities they used to get them there - determination, persistence, hard work, patience, positivity, dedication - discuss how they can apply these skills to their exams.

    Acknowledge that if they do their best that is good enough.

    Ensure they realize that this period in their lives will pass and that exams are only a temporary time in their lives; nothing can and does last forever.

    Ensure they keep their eye on the prize: enjoying their long summer holiday when the exams are finished; giving them something to look forward to will help to motivate them and provide a positive end in sight.

    My folks bought their first house in the early 1940s after Dad got a better job in Marquette, Michigan. We lived just inside the city limits in what was still a rural area.

    In the spring of 1948, when I was 6 years old, my parents bought a calf（小牛）to replace our cow, which had been killed the year before. So one day we drove to a local farm and returned with a white and brown calf we named Tubby.

    We didn't own a truck, so Tubby rode home in the backseat of Dad's car with my 9-year-old brother, Steve, and me. As you can imagine, the trip was a lot of fun for us kids.

    Later that summer, Mom thought it would be cute to take a picture of me sitting on Tubby's back. All went well until the snap of the camera shutter sent Tubby charging off on a run, with me holding on for dear life.

    I lasted for about 30 feet before I hit the ground. Mom was quick enough to shoot a follow-up picture, so we had photos of me both on and off Tubby!

    When summer had passed, the day arrived for poor Tubby to fill our freezer. I must have been somewhere else with my Mom on the fateful day, because I have no memory of how it happened. All I knew was that the barn was empty, and that we had plenty of meat for dinners.

    I hadn't lived on a farm like my mother, so I didn't understand that what happened to Tubby was not unusual. Livestock aren't meant to be pets, and most farm kids know and accept that truth.

    Whenever we had beef for dinner, I would tearfully, “Is this Tubby?” This went on for a couple of weeks until Dad had finally had enough and declared, “No more cows!” That made me feel a little better about poor Tubby.

    Knowing what to do at checkout and properly preparing for it can turn a potentially heated situation into a quick thank you add goodbye. Below we made a list of five things you should remember at hotel checkout.

Don't be late to check

    Hotels may add an extremely high price for being just a half hour late. If you know you won't make the cutoff time, it never hurts to call ahead and try to negotiate away a potential charge.

    Don't forget to double cheek the room and safe

    Make sure you don't leave things behind. If you have an early flight or checkout time, pack up as much as you can the night before so that last-minute rush isn't too annoying. Also, be sure to take out anything in the room safe.

    Don't forget to tip the housekeepers

    It's always polite to leave some money for the people keeping your room clean.

    Don't ignore the detailed bill

    You may be in a rush, but give the detailed hill a careful look to see if the hotel charge is different from the rate you initially booked.

    Don't get angry

    Shooting at the assistant manager standing behind the front desk probably won't help.

    When dealing with an unexpected item on the bill. Think about how difficult it can be to deal with annoyed customers. Keep calm and things may be solved better and sooner.

    In the early decades of the United States, the agrarian(土地的) movement promoted the farmer as society's hero. In the minds of agrarian thinkers and writers, the farmer was a person on whose well-being the health of the new country depended. The period between the Revolution, which ended in 1783, and the Civil War, which ended in 1865, was the age of the farmer in the United States. Agrarian philosophers, represented most eloquently by Thomas Jefferson, celebrated farmers extravagantly for their supposed centrality in a good society, their political virtue, and their Superior morality. And virtually all policy makers, whether they subscribed to the tenets of the philosophy held by Jefferson or not, recognized agriculture as the key component of the American economy. Consequently, government at all levels worked to encourage farmers as a social group and agriculture as economic enterprise.

    Both the national and state governments developed transportation infrastructure, building canals, roads, bridges, and railroads, deepening harbors, and removing obstructions from navigable streams. The national government imported plant and animal varieties and launched exploring expeditions into prospective farmlands in the West. In addition, government trade policies facilitated the exporting of agricultural products.

    For their part, farmers seemed to meet the social expectations agrarian philosophers had for them, as their broader horizons and greater self-respect, both products of the Revolution, were reflected to some degree in their behavior. Farmers seemed to become more scientific, joining agricultural societies and reading the farm newspapers that sprang up throughout the country. They began using improved implements, tried new crops and pure animal breeds, and became more receptive to modern theories of soil improvement.

    They also responded to inducements by national and state governments. Farmers streamed to the West, filling frontier lands with stunning rapidity. But farmers responded less to the expectations of agrarians and government inducements than to growing market opportunities. European demand for food from the United States seemed insatiable. War, industrialization, and urbanization all kept demand high in Europe. United States cities and industries grew as well; even industries not directly related to farming thrived because of the market, money, and labor that agriculture provided.

    The fridge is considered necessary. It has been so since the 1960s when packaged food list appeared with the label: "Store in the refrigerator."

    In my fridge less Fifties childhood, I was fed well and healthy. The milkman came every day, the grocer, the butcher, the baker, and the ice-cream man delivered two or three times each w eek. The Sunday meat would last until Wednesday and the bread and milk left became all kinds of cakes. Nothing was wasted, and w e w ere never troubled by rotten food. Thirty years on, food deliveries have stopped, and fresh vegetables are almost impossible to get in the country.

    The invention of the fridge contributed comparatively little to the art of food preservation. Many well-tried techniques already existed — natural cooling, drying, smoking, salting, sugaring, bottling...

    What refrigeration did promote was marketing — marketing hardware and electricity, marketing soft drinks, marketing dead bodies of animals around the world in search of a good price.

    Consequently, most of the world's fridges are to be found, not in the tropics where they might prove useful, but in the rich countries with mild temperatures where they are climatically almost unnecessary. Every winter, millions of fridges hum (make a low continuous sound) away continuously, and at vast expense, busily maintaining an artificially-cooled space inside an artificially-heated house —while outside, nature provides the desired temperature free of charge.

    The fridge's effect upon the environment has been clear, while its contribution to human happiness has been unimportant. If you don't believe me, try it yourself, invest in a food cupboard and turn off your fridge next winter. You may miss the hamburgers, but at least you'll get rid of that terrible hum.

    One of my favorite hobbies is exchanging old-fashioned, paper-with-a-stamp-on-it postcards with random strangers around the world.

    The Postcrossing Project was created by Paulo Magalhaes in 2005. He liked getting mails—especially postcards. He thought others did, too—but how could he connect with them? That's when he came up with the idea of an online platform (postcrossing.com): There, postcard lovers like me can sign up to send a postcard to someone who has registered online, and receive a postcard in return.

    Along with a randomly selected address, participants get a unique code to put on the postcard. When the postcard arrives, the recipient registers that code with the site, which then causes the sender's address to be given to another postcrosser in turn. In practice, this means that for nearly every postcard I send (a few get lost in the mail) I get one back. And since I never know who will send me a card or where in the world they live, every trip to the mailbox holds the potential for a wonderful surprise.

    Privacy-conscious Americans might worry about sharing their address with strangers overseas. But postcrossers are friendly, polite, respectful folks—in more than 450 cards exchanged, I've yet to have a bad experience.

    On days when the international news is depressing, postcrossing is my comfort. There's nothing like getting a card from a child in China just learning to write in English, or a grandmother in Belarus describing her most recent gardening success to remind me that we truly are members of one global family, far more similar than we are different.

    It seems like such a small thing to send out a postcard. But as travel and communication technology continue to shrink the world, it's important to remember that it isn't just for diplomats and politicians to represent our country anymore. All of us have the power—and perhaps the responsibility—to be ambassadors, to show the best of your country to the world.

    And it's good to know that what you need to accomplish this is not necessarily complicated or expensive. It can be as simple as a postcard.