Learning to set goals plays an important role as your child starts to gain independence. However, setting goals doesn't come naturally to your child, so helping him to learn the process should probably be one of your goals.

    Explain the word “goal”. Your child may know what a goal is when it comes to soccer, but he may not understand what it means in everyday life. {#blank#}1{#/blank#}

    Listen to your child. Ideally, you want your child to be able to decide for himself what his goals are. {#blank#}2{#/blank#} Let him talk about what he thinks he does well and what he thinks needs to improve. If he's stuck, you can provide some examples of your own personal goals.

    Help keep goals achievable. Don't throw cold water on your child. {#blank#}3{#/blank#} For example, if your child wants to be a champion swimmer, but can't swim an entire lap of the pool yet, you can suggest he start by making that his first goal.

    {#blank#}4{#/blank#} Help your child write down his goals in an easy-to-follow form. Being able to see and check off the steps on the way to his goal is the key in keeping him motivated. A really simple way is to have your child draw a ladder on a piece of paper, writing his goal at the top and each step to that goal on the rungs (横木). {#blank#}5{#/blank#}

A. Change goals every so often.

B. Make a visual goal reminder.

C. Don't always tell him what you think.

D. He's climbing to the top as he gets closer to his goal.

E. You can take sports as example to help explain it to him.

F. Once he has set up a goal, he may find it very difficult to achieve it.

G. When a goal is beyond his reach, help him break it down into smaller pieces.

Journey to India

DAY 1: Arrive in Delhi

    Today arrive in Delhi, the national capital of India. Upon arrival at the airport, our company representative will meet you and transfer you to the hotel for check-in.

Overnight at Delhi hotels

DAY 2: Delhi—Full-day tour (old& New Delhi tour)

    Today morning have breakfast in the hotel. At 9:30, the tour guide will meet you at your hotel and later proceed for a full-day guided tour in Delhi starting with Old Delhi visiting Raj Gaht. Jama Masjid, driving past through the Red Fort. Later in New Delhi visit Humayun's Tomb, India Gate, drive past through Parliament Street and President House and visit Qutub Minar.

Overnight at Delhi hotels

DAY 3: Delhi—Jaipur via Fatehpur Sikri (240 km/5 hours)

    Today morning after breakfast, drive to Jaipur, the capital city of Rajsthan state. Jaipur is also known as “Pink City”. En route visit Fatehpur Sikri, known as Ghost Capital. Later continue the drive to Jaipur. Upon arrival, check in at the hotel. Evening: free at leisure for your own activities.

Optional: visits to Chokhi Dhani Village Resort (US $25 per person)

Overnight at Jaipur hotels

DAY 4: Delhi (256 km/5 hours)

    Today morning after breakfast, drive back to Delhi airport. The total distance is 256 kms and you can cover it in 5 hours. Upon arrival in Delhi, board flight to onward journey.

NOTE: Price starts with US $ 215 with

• Daily breakfast and soft beverages (饮料) and packaged drinking water.

• Elephant rides at Amber Fort.

• Sunset or sunrise visits to Taj Mahal.

• All entrance fees to the monuments and train tickets.

    Ahead of so-called Singles' Day on the 11th of this month，2013, online sales have already begun peaking.

    The leading e-business platform, tmall.com, has promoted(促销) its fifty-percent-off discount to attract consumers. They are also trying to attract buyers through social media. Vice President of tmall.com Wang Yulei says more than 20 thousand online stores have joined the Double 11 Day sales. But this number has doubled. The final number of how many products going to be on sale has not been known yet. But so far, many more products planned to be put on shelves with discounts.

    During last year's Singles' Day, tmall.com, together with taobao.com, reached a record of 19.1 billion yuan in sales, which considered a milestone in the e-business history of China.

    Singles' Day was first started by Chinese college students in the 1990s as the opposite of Valentine's Day, a celebration for people without romantic partners. The timing was based on the date: Nov. 11—or double 11—for singles. Single young people would treat each other to dinner or give gifts to show love to someone and end their single status.

    But now, the Singles' Day has been promoted as a kind of grand craze just for the shopping season, thanks to thousands of discounted products being promoted online.

    Taobao.com was the first big e-retail platform which used the double 11 idea to promote sales. Taobao.com reached one million yuan worth of sales on that day in 2009, when they first promoted the Singles' Day idea. In 2010, the sales increased to 936 million yuan. The figure climbed up to 5.3 billion yuan in 2011, putting huge demand on shipping services. The figure doubled in 2012.

    E-commerce is considered to be replacing the traditional retailing industry, but the reality is both sides are learning from each other.

    You can't always predict a heavy rain or remember your umbrella. But designer Mikhail Belyaev doesn't think that forgetting to check the weather forecast before heading out should result in you getting wet. That's why he created Lampbrella, a lamp post with its own rain-sensing umbrella.

    The designer says he came up with the idea after watching people get wet on streets in Russia. “Once, I was driving on a central Saint Petersburg street and saw the street lamps lighting up people trying to hide from the rain. I thought it would be appropriate to have a canopy(伞蓬) built into a street lamp,” he said.

    The Lampbrella is a standard-looking street lamp fitted with an umbrella canopy. It has a built-in electric motor which can open or close the umbrella on demand Sensors(传感器) then ensure that the umbrella offers pedestrians shelter whenever it starts raining.

    In addition to the rain sensor, there's also a 360°motion sensor on the fiberglass street lamp which detects whether anyone is using the Lampbrella. After three minutes of not being used the canopy is closed.

    According to the designer, the Lampbrella would move at a relatively low speed, so as not to cause harm to the pedestrians. Besides, it would be grounded to protect from possible lightning strike. Each Lampbrella would offer enough shelter for several people. Being installed(安装) at 2 metres off the ground, it would only be a danger for the tallest of pedestrians.

    While there are no plans to take the Lampbrella into production, Belyaev says he recently introduced his creation to one Moscow Department, and insists his creation could be installed on any street where a lot of people walk but there are no canopies to provide shelter.

    They train four hours a day, often waking up at 4:30 or 5:00 for before-school practices. Their evenings and weekends are eaten up by twice-weekly travel games. Every day is the same; there's no break. No, these aren't Olympic athletes; they're kids.

    The benefits of sports are obvious. So, it's not surprising that, according to CNN, 41 million American children play competitive sports. But when does this become too much of a good thing?

    Seven years ago, a survey in Sporting Kid magazine found 84 percent of athletes' parents had observed belligerent behavior in other parents at games and that 80 percent had been targets of this behavior. What does this say about sports culture, and our culture as a whole? Some parents have become so crazy about their children's winning that they don't stop to think about what example they are setting.

    If athletes are constantly surrounded by adults who scream at coaches and attack sports officials, they may think that this is acceptable behavior. They'll try to win at all costs. In other words, they won't know how to accept defeat, and learn from it.

    The amount of time some athletes spend practicing can be dangerous. According to Sports Illustrated, over 3.5 million athletes younger that 15 suffered from a sports-related injury—that's nearly one in ten! Many injuries cause permanent（永久的）damage if not treated.

    So what can we do about this situation? Some argue that there is no problem, because sports has always been and will always be competitive. But did your grandparents spend hours each day practicing tennis or volleyball? No, they probably played with the neighborhood kids after school, not worrying about winning. All they wanted was to have fun. And that's what we need to change in youth sports—focus on enjoyment.

    The fiddler crab (蟹) is a living clock. It indicates the time of day by the colour of its skin, which is dark by day and pale by night. The crabs changing colour follows a regular twenty-four hour plan that exactly matches the daily rhythm (节奏) of the sun.

    Does the crab actually keep time, or does its skin simply answer to the sun's rays, changing colour according to the amount of light strikes it? To find out, biologists kept crabs in a dark room for two months. Even without daylight, the crab's skin colour continued to change exactly on time.

    This characteristic(特性) probably developed gradually in answer to the daily rising and setting of the sun, to help protect the crab from sunlight and enemies. After millions of years it has become completely regulated (受控制) inside the living body of the crab.

    The biologists noticed that once each day the colour of the fiddler crab is especially dark, and that each day this happens fifty minutes later than on the day before. From this they discovered that each crab follows not only the rhythm of the sun but also that of the tides (潮水). The crabs period of greatest darkening is exactly the time of low tide on the beach where it was cought!