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.

    “Body clocks” are biological methods of controlling body activities. Every living thing has one. In humans, a body clock controls normal periods of sleeping and waking. It controls the times when you are most likely to feel pain. Eating, sleeping and exercising at about the same time each day will help keep body activities normal. But changes in your life—a new job, for example—destroy the balance and thus cause health problems. You could have difficult sleeping, for example. Scientists suggest that early afternoon is the best time of day for physical exercise. They say we are stronger and faster then. Later, about four o'clock, most people feel tired because of the drop of sugar level in the blood. Early afternoon also is a good time to do tasks about memory（记忆） and mathematics. If you must study, however, do it just before going to sleep at night. Scientists say you are more likely to remember information when there is a short delay（耽搁）between study and bed. Body clocks control all the activities from day to day. They also produce changes about every ninety minutes during the day. At the end of such a time period, our ability to think hard begins to become weak. That is the time we are most likely to day-dream. Within fifteen minutes, we are ready to go back to what we were doing.

    Football, to me, is more than just a game. I have probably learned more valuable lessons from it than from school.

    When I joined the team freshman year, I didn't realize what I was getting into. Even though I had been playing since fourth grade and knew it was hard work, nothing would prepare me for the effort I would put into football that year. We worked all summer in the weight room and ran on the track to get in physical and mental shape before the season.

    See, football is more of a mental sport than anything else, so running on the track wasn't only about getting in shape, we would push our minds by running as hard as we could even if we were going to pass out. At the beginning, I was immature（幼稚）and only thought of myself, sometimes even gave up when I was tired or hurt. Then after the third game I had a season-ending injury. Imagine working all summer and then only being able to play three games! I needed surgery（外科手术）on my arm and at least five months to recover.

    Needless to say, I missed the rest of the season, but this actually helped me realize that since you never know when your last play will be, you should try your hardest in football and life.

    After freshman year I decided that I would always give my best effort. Playing varsity（校队的）football has taught me so much more than just what my assignments are on a particular play or how to block. I have learned to think about others first and realized how important working hard is. Being with all my friends, even sweating and bleeding with them, really made us bond as a group of hard-working young men who I know will succeed in life.

    Weighing too much can damage your health, and obesity is a growing problem for both kids and adults around the world. Sleep might be one answer to the problem. A new study has found that elementary school students who slept too little were more likely to gain pounds.

    Past studies have shown a link between sleeping less and weighing more, but scientists have had a tough time determining "which came first, the chicken or the egg," says Julie C. Lumeng of the university of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In other words, it hasn't been clear whether kids who weigh too much have trouble sleeping, or whether sleeping less leads to weight gain. Both scenarios (可能出现的情况) seemed equally possible.

    To get a better idea of which causes which, Lumeng and her colleagues interviewed the parents of 785 third graders from around the United States. The parents answered questions about how well their kids slept that year. Three years later, the parents answered the same questions. By sixth grade, 18percent of kids involved in the study were obese.

    The scientists found no relationship between weight and the students' race or gender. It also didn't matter how strict their parents were, or whether they were boys or girls. Obesity struck all of these groups equally. Instead, sleep seemed to be the key factor. Over the three years of study, the children averaged a healthy 9. 5 hours of sleep a night. Some kids, however, slept a lot more or less than others.

    For the sixth graders, every hour of sleep above the 9. 5houraverage was linked to a 20 percent lower risk of being obese. Sleep appeared doubly important for the third graders. Every extra hour of sleep they got was linked to a 40 percent drop in obesity.

    What do you think of your Chinese? If you think your Chinese is good enough, you can take part in the competition named Chinese Characters Dictation Competition(中国汉字听写大会).

    Today teenagers are using more and more smart phones. They spend too much time in shopping, chatting, playing games and so on. Many of them cannot using smart phones to help with their study. Overuse of smart phones will make students too lazy to think and write. Some of them even forget how to write Chinese characters by hand. Teachers and parents are very worried about it.

    In order to draw people's attention to the problems above, in 2013 CCTV held the first Chinese Characters Dictation Competition. About 200 students from 32 teams took part in it. They stood on the stage to write down Chinese characters by dictation. Lu Jialei, a 14-year-old girl from Zhejiang, got first place.

    Since then, the competition has been popular among teenagers. Many people are interested in this kind of competition, too. They like to write down the characters while the competitors(参赛者)are writing them.

    Can you be the next winner?