One windy spring day, I noticed young people having fun using the wind to fly their kites. Colorful creations of different shapes and sizes filled the skies like beautiful birds flying and dancing. As the strong winds blew against the kites, a string (线) kept them in control.

    Instead of blowing away with the wind, they rose against it to achieve great heights. They shook and pulled, but the restraining (控制的) string and the cumbersome (笨重的) tail kept them in control, facing upward and against the wind. As the kites struggled against the string, they seemed to say, "Let me go! Let me go! I want to be free!" They rose beautifully even when they fought the restriction of the string. Finally, one of the kites succeeded in breaking loose (松散的). "Free at last," it seemed to say. "Free to fly with the wind."

    Yet freedom (自由) simply put it in the control of an unkind wind. It fell down to the ground and landed in a mass of weeds and string against a dead bush. "Free at last", free to lie powerlessly in the dirt, to be blown helplessly along the ground, and to stop lifelessly against the first obstacle (障碍物).

    How much like kites we sometimes are. The Heaven gives us adversity (逆境) and rules, rules to follow from which we can grow and get strength. Some of us break away from the rules so hard that we never reach the heights we might get to. We keep part of the rules and never rise high enough to get our tails off the ground.

    Let us each rise to the great heights, knowing that some of the rules that we may be angry about are in fact the strong force that helps us achieve.

    A'Layah Robinson lives in Oklahoma, USA. She is only seven years old, but already she has big ideas for helping other kids!

    One Saturday morning when A'Layah was five, she noticed some teenagers who had a lemonade stand(柠檬饮料摊位). They wanted to raise money to help some of their friends. A'Layah wanted very much to help kids too, especially foster kids(寄养儿童)! You see, A'Layah and her brother were both foster kids. The little girl's birth mother was a drug addict (吸毒成瘾者), so she was taken to a foster care centre. Luckily, she finally found a forever home in the Robinson family.

    But A'Layah still couldn't forget the day when her brother came to live with them. She felt sad that he only had old clothes and shoes that were too small. She thought maybe she could help with a lemonade stand! That way she could raise money so that other foster kids could have a toy and a few other things of their own.

    A'Layah's first lemonade stand made $132! A'Layah was so excited to go with her mother to buy things for the foster kids. She decided they should have a toy, a toothbrush, a blanket and a book. Her first donation(捐赠物) was for 24 kids!

    A'Layah wanted to help more kids, so her mum helped her start a charity called A'Layah's Lemonade for Love. Till now, it has already raised over$17, 000! A'Layah hopes someday she will be able to send a toy to every kid in foster care.

    As more information comes out about 10-year-old Cindy Smith's death(死亡), worries about amusement park safety(游乐场安全性) grow.

Cindy is not the first child who died on an amusement park ride. 25 years ago, the mother of a 14-year-old girl waited to pick up her daughter outside Worlds of Fun. Laura Barry never saw her daughter Rosie alive again.

"My heart goes out to the Smith family more than they can ever possibly know," said Barry. She is one of the few people who truly know the hurt that family is feeling.

In 1995, Rosie's mom said that something went wrong on the Timber Wolf the night Rosie died. Police found no evidence(证据). Two men told the police that they saw Rosie standing before she fell out of the car.

"I couldn't believe that such a thing could happen still and again," said Barry. She believes Rosie's death should have been a wakeup call for amusement park safety.

She finds that not much has changed in the past years. Amusement parks race to build bigger, taller, faster rides. In her opinion, amusement parks just try to bring in visitors and give them the idea that riding is good, safe and fun. She believes that parks should have put safety first.

There is no exact number of amusement park deaths each year. It is quite low according to some websites. But Barry doesn't accept that. "My daughter was the only person that had ever been killed at Worlds of Fun in all of the years, among all of the thousands and thousands of people that went there. The number doesn't mean anything, you know, because when your child is the one, that's one too many," she said.

Jenny had an argument with her best friend Judy last Sunday. She thought 1 was really difficult and wanted to copy Judy's homework. But Judy 2 . They didn't talk to each other for a few days. Jenny didn't know 3 to face her maths problem and she wondered if she could get on well 4 her friend again.

Yesterday afternoon, she saw a cool boy playing the 5 happily by the road when she was walking home from school. The violin sounded so nice. 6 Jenny didn't know what music he was playing, it made her feel better. After he finished the music, Jenny walked over to 7 and said, "Thank you for your beautiful music. It gets me out of the really 8 mood(心情)." Then she reached inside her pocket and took out some 9 and gave it to him. To her surprise, the boy asked her to take the money back. He explained that he wasn't making money by playing the violin. He just wanted to 10 others. He hoped that the wonderful music could make people 11 and happy. That's why he played it by the road. What a 12 boy he was! Then Jenny told him about her trouble.

He said, "You should learn to smile, even if you are in difficulty. Listening to music is helpful. So why not listen to music as 13 as possible? Never lose heart! Believe in your friend! She has her reason. 14 yourself! Everything will go well!" Hearing these words, Jenny went home with a(n) 15 . She believed she could make it.

People know animals do have feelings, but they are not sure if these feelings are correctly understood. In recent years, scientists have done research about the feelings of cows, frogs and pandas.  ▲  It says that humans can tell whether a chicken is happy or sad by listening to its calls.

The researchers put a bowl behind a door. Inside the bowl, sometimes, there was something chickens love to eat, such as rice or insects. Sometimes, there was nothing. When the chickens saw food behind the door, they seemed happy and produced fast and loud sounds, known as food calls. When there wasn't food, the chickens made low and long noises to express disappointment. The researchers recorded all these sounds and studied their waves.

Then the researchers chose 16 recordings of such chicken noises. Half were from the chickens seeing the food and half were from the chickens finding no food. The recordings were played to 194 volunteers. Sixty-nine percent of the volunteers correctly understood whether the chickens were feeling happy or not, and some of them even had no experience of taking care of chickens.

The result shows that humans have the natural ability to understand the feelings of chickens. Hopefully, this finding can bring about new technology to help with chicken-raising, a big industry in many countries. Some scientists are already working on a smart computer program that can identify chickens' feelings. This is good news for farmers who want to make the birds happier and healthier.