【推荐3】Your preschooler is painting with fingers. Trying to be encouraging, you ask her, “What are you making with this mix of colors?” and she shrugs (耸肩). Until you mentioned it, she hadn’t given it any though.     1     They love the way it feels when they pour paint on paper, how it looks when they wildly drop glitter, and even the soft sound a brush makes as it crosses the page.

Most preschoolers aren’t self-conscious about what they’re doing or focused on creating a finished product.     2     But letting go — and allowing kids to enjoy the process of creation — can harvest big rewards. Children will be better off in the long run if they’re allowed just to be in the moment and express themselves.

Fostering (培养) creativity won’t just increase your child’s chances of becoming the next Picasso.     3     As kids use a paintbrush, their fine motor skills improve. By counting pieces and colors, they learn the basics of math. When children experiment with materials, they dive in science. Most important perhaps, when kids feel good while they are creating, art helps boost self-confidence.

    4     Set up an art space where your kid can be free to experiment. Throw a drop cloth or a newspaper on top of your kitchen table or in the garage. If weather permits, let kids paint outside. Avoid giving directions. Don’t tell your kid what to make or how to make it. Instead of saying, “Paint a rainbow,” encourage her to “experiment with mixing colors using different types of brushes and paper.” When a child finishes a piece, don’t suggest additions or changes.     5    

【推荐2】Wild African elephants may break sleep records for mammals (哺乳动物). New data show that they seem to survive on about two hours of shut-eye a night. Much of that sleeping took place while they were standing up. The animals lie down to sleep only once every three to four nights.

Trying to figure out how much wild elephants sleep just by watching them 24 hours a day is tricky, especially in the dark. Much of what scientists had known about sleeping elephants came from animals living in zoos, notes Paul Manger, who is a brain researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. In zoos, elephants have been recorded sleeping from about three hours to nearly seven during a 24-hour period. Using electronic monitors on African elephants in the wild, however, has turned up more extreme behavior.

Manger’s team implanted (植入) activity monitors in the trunks (象鼻) of two elephants. Both were female leaders of their herds in the Chobe National Park. Trunks, like human hands, are important for exploring the world. Elephants hardly keep them still — unless sleeping. The researchers thought that a trunk monitor that didn’t move for at least five minutes likely meant its host was asleep.

The monitors tracked the animals over about a month. During that time, the elephants averaged just two hours of sleep a day. What’s more, the elephants were able to skip a night’s sleep without needing extra rest the next day. Those trunk implants showed there were times when the elephants went up to 46 hours without any sleep.

There has been some thought that animals need sleep to store memories properly. But that can’t explain animals, like the elephants, which skip sleep for a night without needing catch-up rest later. “Elephants are usually not considered to be forgetful animals,” Manger observes. In fact, he notes, studies have found that they can have long memories.

【推荐3】On Tuesday the Indian Army found mysterious large footprints in the snow.The military group.on an outing in Nepal, took pictures and later put them on Twitter.Their conclusion: the footprints belong to the Yeti, also known as the abominable snowman.

Most experts in the scientific community say the Yeti is a myth, an imaginary story.The man-like creature is part of Nepali tradition and is said to live high in the Himalayan mountains.

In the tweet, the Indian army said it found the footprints close to a camp near Mount Makalu on April 9.The footprints measured 81 centimeters by 38 centimeters.The tweet did not explain how a mythical beast could leave footprints.

Reactions on social media

The Indian army’s Twitter post has drawn criticism(批评)by some on social media. One user, for example, put an image of a big hole in Bombay and said that Yeti footprints could be found there.Other users said that the supposed Yeti tracks appeared to be a single foot line.One user suggested the Yeti may have been riding a kind of strange bicycle.

Mount Makalu and the Yeti

Mount Makalu, where the Indian Army took the photographs, Is one of the highest mountains in the world.It stands near the Makalu-Barun valley, an area very far from human population.The area has already been explored by researchers looking for the Yeti.

Daniel C.Taylor is one of them.He wrote a book on the mystery of the Yeti.Taylor pointed out that the footprints likely came from a bear.Taylor told the Reuters news agency that if the footprints came from "an animal or a single animal, it's the size of a dinosaur."Taylor added, " One needs to really confirm those measurements of the footprint size because we know for sure that there are no dinosaurs living in the Barun valley.

Since the 1920s, tales of a wild beast have attracted climbers in Nepal and around the world.In2008, Japanese climbers returning from a mountain in western Nepal told Reuters they had seen footprints, which they thought belonged to the Yeti.Although they carried cameras, video equipment and telescopes, they had not seen or taken any photographs of the creature.In 2017, a group of international researchers studied many Yeti samples(样本) The researchers concluded the samples belonged to bears.