As we all know, children are our future, and it's up to us to arm them with the tools to succeed. Sadly, today's children are sometimes being armed with more dangerous tools like weapons, drugs and gangs in the USA. Once a relatively peaceful environment, many schoolyards of today are becoming unsafe for both students and teachers.

    Home schools are available to give you choices. Home schooling provides top-quality education, flexibility and freedom to create your own schedule. At Sunny Home School we believe the choice should be yours.

    Thanks to modern technology, home schooling information is becoming readily available across the nation. A recent study by the ITBS (Iowa Tests of Basic Skills) and TAP (Tests of Achievement and Proficiency) shows us that students of home schools do particularly well when compared with the nationwide average. In every subject at every grade level, students of home schooling scored obviously higher than those in public and private schools.

    If you're new to home schooling, you may be asking yourself, “Will home schools really work for my children?”

Fact: A nationwide study using a random selection of 1,516 families found students of home schooling to be scoring, on average, at or above the 80^th percentile (百分位的第80位) in all areas, on standardized achievement test. (Note: The national average on standardized achievement test is the 50^th percentile.)

    Collectively, the staff at Sunny Home School brings 65 years of experience in home schooling curriculum. We've placed students in the top 2% of the nation in math and many are successfully moving on to college.

    One study found that of the home schooled students, 94% said home education prepared them to be independent persons.

    For more home schooling information, call us today toll free at (1800)542-8668.

    Whether you're up for a Crocodile Dundee's adventure or you'd just like a taste of the Australian sun, the beaches in and around Sydney can offer you all that and more.

Sydney Beach

    Sydney Beach is located at Sydney's northernmost tip on an extension(延伸) of land ending at Palm Beach. Before checking out the golden sand, take a quick tour of the houses of millionaires from the art and film industries.

Palm Beach

    Only about an hour from downtown Sydney, Palm Beach offers a long stretch(延伸) of clean sand and water. With parking near the center of the beach, that leaves the rest of it as a peaceful location with a sparse population, from which you can go surfing but take care — without the huge crowds of other Sydney's beaches, Palm Beach doesn't afford quite the safety level to be found elsewhere. Volunteer lifesavers are on duty only on weekends and holidays.

Bondi Beach

    For the famous beach, Bondi Beach has to be your choice. Parking is difficult to find even on slow days, so consider taking public transport to this world—known beach in the eastern Sydney suburbs. Easily reachable by taxi, bus, and rail, Bondi Beach offers sun bathing, swimming, snorkeling, and all sorts of water sports fun. If you're in the mood for a bit of exercise, two scenic coastal walks will afford you great views and sights along the shore. Take in views from Mackenzie's Point. It starts at Bondi and heads south to Bronte Beach. But don't try to swim in Mackenzie's Bay — it holds dangers such as hidden rocks.

Bronte Beach

    Your second choice for a scenic coastal walk covers a few miles and takes you from Bronte Beach to Waverly Cemetery, where many famous Australians are buried, including the poet Henry Lawson.

Four apps for students to learn English

    Quizlet

    Quizlet is a learning app—a computer program you use on your mobile device. It can help users build and test their knowledge of English words and terms. Quizlet has word sets for millions of subjects. And, it is quickly becoming a useful mobile tool for language learners.

    Socrative

    In Socrative, teachers can create timed learning games. In class, students compete individually or as part of a team against classmates. One game students love is called space Race. In this game, if a team answers a question correctly, their rocket moves forward. This team whose rocket gets to the end first wins. Also, teachers can use Socrative as an “exit ticket, ”a question they can ask students about what they learned in that day's class. Students write their answers on their mobile devices. Then, the teacher can show the answers on a shared video screen.

    QR Codes

    AQRCodeisakindofsignthatasmartphonecanreadwithitscamera. When your phone camera reads a QR code, it takes you to a website, image, video or anything you want to share. For example, one will take you to the VOA Learning English website.

    Evernote

    Evernote lets users store and share notes, images and recordings in one place. Teachers can also use Evernote to give homework.

    German engineers Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz built the first successful gasoline engines in 1885.After 1900, however, the United States became a leader in automobile production.

    The first cars were handmade and very expensive. Only people in rich cities could afford them. The first company to make gasoline cars in the U.S. was the Duryea Motor Wagon Company. Then, in 1901, Ransom E. Olds Began mass-producing his car, the Oldsmobile. In 1913Henry Ford made great strides in the mass production of cars by using an assembly line in his factory. Mass production meant that each car was less expensive to make. Now car ownership was affordable for the average person. By 1916there were more than one million cars in the United States.

    The automobile gave people the freedom to travel anywhere there were passable roads. Families that lived great distance apart could travel by automobile to visit each other. People could visit places they had never seen before.

    Before the mass production of cars, people lived close to work. Their means of transportation included walking, riding a bicycle, using a horse and carriage, or taking a train. The automobile gave people the ability to live farther away from work. The result was that gradually people moved out of the cities to the less crowded suburbs.

    The automobile industry created millions of jobs. The jobs were not just in the auto factories, where the cars were assembled. Workers were needed to make auto parts, run gas stations and repair shops, and work at new motels and restaurants that served people who traveled by car. Jobs became available at car rental companies. People were needed to build roads. These jobs and many others still exist because of the automobile.

    Like a lot of health-care professionals, Dr. Brian Goldman finds it extremely difficult to draw boundaries between his work and personal lives. "There's this view that you should suck it up and do one more thing," says the ER physician and host of CBC's White Coat, Black Art. But that "one more thing" often comes at Goldman's expense.

    "You're exhausted and a patient or their family look at you with begging eyes," he says. "So you have this dilemma: say that your shift is over or give until you're totally spent?" Goldman's work stress combined with family tension after his mother was diagnosed with dementia 20 years ago. Caring for her over a decade was difficult, as was dealing with his father's grief. "When someone else is drowning you, you have to grab a life preserver and save yourself," says Goldman.

    Setting boundaries isn't just important for busy professionals; everyone can benefit from managing situations that cause undue stress or pain. Here are some tips.

First, "If someone's behavior makes you unhappy — and it could be anything from the way they speak to you to repeatedly failing to stick to their promise — then there's room to set limits," says Patrick Keelan, a Calgary psychologist. We often avoid setting limits because we prioritize the happiness and comfort of others over ours. In order to control this impulse, Goldman suggests framing the development of boundaries as a form of self-kindness. When facing an overwhelming situation like the one he was in with his father, Goldman suggests reflecting on what is making you feel uncomfortable, unhappy or unappreciated. "You can't relate to others or be kind to others if you aren't kind to yourself," he says.

Second, once you've become aware of your needs, setting and maintaining boundaries requires clear verbal communication. There are three obstacles to enforcing boundaries in a relationship: fear, guilt and self-doubt, says psychologist Nicole MaCance. We often fear that if we set limits, the other person will reject us, or we feel bad claiming our needs. Keelan proposes setting ground rules before relationships become tense. Start by cooperatively listing values — like mutual respect, support, and loyalty — and then building the guidelines from these values. If you're struggling to reach a consensus, Keelan recommends engaging a third party, such as a therapist, to help.

    Now, if you want a boundary to stick to, you can't enable someone in breaking it. As such, it's crucial to establish consequences for  transgressions (越轨). Otherwise, McMance says," you're giving them permission to violate that boundary." If they won't respect your boundaries, you have to do some soul- searching about the value of the relationship. "When you feel bad more than you feel good in this person's presence, and when the relationship is impacting your self-worth and happiness, it's time to reassess," says McCance. Saying no is hard, but she suggests framing it as saying yes to healthier relationships. "We're all better mothers and partners and brothers when we have boundaries."

This winter, the U. S. state of California received unusually large amounts of rain and snow. Now, people worry that some areas will flood as the snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains melts (融化).

Ron Caetano lives about half-way between the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco. He is preparing to leave in case his community, called the Island District, floods.

More than 100 years ago, the Island District area was under a large lake named Tulare Lake. At one time, Tulare Lake was the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi River. But reservoirs (水库) and watering systems for agriculture caused it to disappear. However, in very rainy years, farmland can still get covered with water.

Experts say reservoirs near the area will likely receive three times more water than they can hold this year. That means officials must increase the amount of water they release (释放) from the reservoirs. If too much water is released, the area might flood.

The Island District has organized a community network to help prepare for floods. People are placing sandbags close to elderly neighbors' houses to block possible flooding. And they are looking at reports from water officials, county officials, and from each other.

California has had very dry weather in recent years. Both cities and farm communities acclaimed this year's winter rains. If the weather gets warmer slowly, the snow will not melt quickly and there may be little or no flooding. But if the weather gets hot quickly, that will bring trouble from too much melting snow.

Officials announced plans to close parts of Yosemite National Park because of threats of flooding. The park is about 270 kilometers east of San Francisco in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

Nicholas Pinter is with the University of California, Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. He said the lake's size has always changed because of California's weather. He described the surrounding area this way. "It has been an engineering problem all along," he said. "This is a bathtub (浴缸) with no way out."