【推荐1】An allowance (零用钱）is an important tool for teaching kids how to budget, save and make their own decisions.Children remember and learn from mistakes when their own dollars are lost or spent foolishly.

How large an allowance is proper? Experts say there is not right amount.Actual amounts differ from area to area, and from family to family.To set a right amount of allowance for your child, work up a weekly budget- Allow for entertainment expenditure such as movies and snacks.' Next, include everyday expenses such as lunch money, bus fare, and school supplies.“If you make the child responsible for these 4 bills'，” says Josephine Swanson, a consumer (消费者）specialist，“he or she will learn to budget for necessary expenditure.”

Finally, add some extra money to make saving possible.If you can, keep your child's allowance in line with that of his or her friends.A child whose purchasing (购买)power falls away below his or her friends' can feel left out.

It can be hard, but avoid excusing your children when they make a mistake with their allowance.When Brooke Stephens was ten and growing up in Jacksonville, her mother gave her $5 a week, 1 - 75 of which was for bus fare and lunch.“If you lose your money，”Brooke's mother told her，“you walk home.”One week the girl spent all her allowance in a candy store； then she called home for a ride.“ Mom made me walk home， ” recalled Stephens，now a financial (财务）planner in Brooklyn.“At first I was angry.But I finally realized that she was trying to teach me an important lesson.”

Experts advise that an allowance should not be tied directly to a child's daily chores.Kids should help around the house not because they get paid for it but because they share responsibilities as members of a family.You might, however, pay a child for doing extra jobs at home.That can develop his or her initiative (主动性).

【推荐2】It was in 2004 that I decided to build a garden at Charlton Manor Primary School. I’d seen the news reports about children lacking (缺乏) knowledge of where their food came from and felt that we as a society had been separated from food. The reason for this was clear to me: we were no longer educating our children about food in schools. I saw a garden as a chance for the children to learn in a real way. I also wanted to use it to cover topics: life cycles, flowering plants, creative writing and report writing. I believed that plenty of subjects could be well taught in a garden, while increasing pupils’ activity levels and encouraging teamwork.

With many teachers facing explanations from children such as “It wasn’t my fault” and “It wasn’t only me”, here was our chance to develop a sense of responsibility. It hasn’t all been plain sailing (一帆风顺) though. At the beginning, we tried hard to get some of the teachers on board, because of concerns that behavioural problems would worsen — because if they couldn’t trust the children in the classroom, wouldn’t they be worse outside? But once those teachers started making use of the garden there was recognisable behaviour change in those pupils. The children worked as a team and took responsibility for growing the plants.

We needed to think about funding (资金), too. I know other schools that have taken different routes to support such projects — finding parent and grandparent volunteers or someone with a knowledge of gardening who are ready to share their skills and support teachers. Community is a big thing for us. Products from the garden are sold in the school shop, run by the children on weekdays. We’ve also begun selling products, such as tomatoes, potatoes, eggs and honey to parents and others, and a local restaurant and Borough Market in central London, helping us to channel (引导) funds back into the garden.

The research of the Food Growing in Schools Taskforce makes clear the advantages of school gardens: learning, increased understanding of the natural environment. It has also shown that outdoor learning can add value to everyday experiences in the classroom. I’d agree. The garden has provided wonderful learning chances for the children. It has brought the community together.

【推荐3】Imagine a mass of floating waste is two times the size of the state of Texas. Texas has a land area of more than 678,000 square kilometers. So it might be difficult to imagine anything twice as big. All together, this mass of waste flowing in the North Pacific Ocean is known as the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch (太平洋垃圾带). It weighs about 3,500,000 tons. The waste includes bags, bottles and containers-plastic products of all kinds.

The eastern part of the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch is about 1,600 kilometers west of California. The western part is west of the Hawaiian Islands and east of Japan. The area has been described as a kind of oceanic desert, with light winds and slow moving water currents (流，流动). The water moves so slow that garbage from all over the world collects there.

In recent years, there have been growing concerns about the floating garbage and its effect on sea creatures and human health. Scientists say thousands of animals get trapped in the floating waste, resulting in death or injury. Even more die from a lack of food or water after swallowing pieces of plastic. The trash can also make animals feel full, diminishing their desire to eat or drink.

The floating garbage also can have harmful effects on people. There is an increased threat of infection (感染) of disease from polluted waste, and from eating fish that swallowed waste. Divers can also get trapped in the plastic.

Its existence first gained public attention in 1997. That was when racing boat captain and oceanographer Charles Moore and his crew sailed into the garbage while returning from a racing event. Five years earlier, another oceanographer learnt of the trash after a shipment of rubber duckies got lost at sea. Many of those toys are now part of the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.

In August, 2017, a team from the University of California, San Diego became the latest group to travel to it. They were shocked by the amount of waste they saw. They gathered hundreds of sea creatures and water samples to measure the garbage patch’s effect on ocean environment.