【推荐1】If you want your children to become able gardeners, take steps early. Here are some suggestions given by Jeff Lowenfels to help turn a child into a gardener.

☆ Get your child interested in plants

A plant store is a good place. There, your child can smell and touch the plants.

Next, let your child buy a plant. Lowenfels still remembers the first plant his father helped him choose when he was six years old.

☆ Teach your children well

Children copy adults. So, let them see how much you enjoy working with plants.

Another great way is to have them grow plants from seeds(种子). This is very effective (高效的) when the plants are things they like to eat. Carrots are favorites of many children.

☆ Give them a job

Children like responsibility (责任). Find a task that fits their age and ability.

They can fill containers (容器) with soil, water or provide the right amount (数量) of light.

☆ Take it easy in the garden

Any adult teaching a child about gardening, needs an easygoing attitude (态度). If not, they could put a child off gardening forever.

Lowenfels shares a story of his daughter. At the time, she was 4 years old and was helping him prepare their flower garden for a flower show. She followed him and “cleaned up”, which meant removing (去除) all the flowers. Instead of getting angry, he simply put the flowers into containers and set them near the bare (光秃秃的) plants.

“Because of a little attitude adjustment (调整) on my part,” he writes, “40 years later, my daughter still loves to garden.”

Cats love to cram themselves into boxes or whatever other narrow spaces they can find. But why do they do this? Why do cats love boxes so much?

“This makes sense because side push comforts animals.” said Gabriella Smith, a professor at the University of Veterinary Medicine. This sense of comfort is especially important in stressful situations, such as when a street cat is brought inside for the first time. Dutch scientists noted that the ability to hide was very important in lowering the stress levels of cats that had just arrived at an animal center. They also found that when the cats were taken from the cover, they would turn over their litter boxes to hide.

Scientists did a study to explore that cats would sit inside a Kanizsa contour （错觉轮廓）, a square that are mapped （映射） on a floor. In other words, cats love boxes so much, they’ll even like sitting in fake, 2 D ones.

So how would this behavior benefit （受益） cats? One theory is that it helps them avoid dangerous situations. “As a small animal wanting to survive the competitive nature, cats don’t want to walk into things, to fall off a cliff （悬崖）, when two things with different colors suddenly come at a time, they’d better hide and watch before next move.” Smith said.

Another possible explanation is that cats like boxes because they are born hunters hiding and waiting in the bushes. After all, as any cat owner can prove, house cats love to use boxes, corners to hide themselves before jumping on an unsuspecting toy or human. “My cat does it if we’re playing—she’ll hide behind something so that she can jump from nowhere.” Smith said.

And our kitties aren’t the only cats that love boxes. According to zoo studies, big cats—including pumas, lions and tigers—enjoy sitting in and playing with boxes of all sizes.

Cats are     1     about boxes. If there are no boxes in the room, they would rather sit in unreal boxes called Kanizsa contour. Scientists think side push gives street cats a     2     feeling to lower their stress levels when arriving at the animal center. They will still hide under litter boxes if the     3     is taken away. There are at least two advantages which cats can benefit from this strange behavior. For one thing, it helps cats to be more     4       with dangerous situations—they will hide when something strange may happen; for the other, cats always hide in some place and suddenly jump out, it’s helpful for their     5    . But kitties are not alone, believe it or not, even big cats like tigers like boxes!

Once a boy wanted to fly. He made a pair of wings. He used some wax (蜡) to keep the feathers on the wooden frame. He flew and flew, and flew too close to the Sun. The Sun melted the wax, and the feathers were blown off by the wind. Down came the boy into the ocean.

This is just a story. But it tells us that man has always dreamed of flying. In 1783, this dream came true. Two French brothers invented the hot-air balloon. It rose a thousand feet high.

It took almost 100 years for man to move from the hot-air balloon to the first airship. The first airship was invented in the late 1800s. It was a powered (装有发动机的) balloon.

In North Carolina, less than twenty-five years later, the Wright Brothers flew the first airplane. This first flight, in 1903, lasted less than half a minute! It covered just a few feet.

By the 1960s, man had moved from airplanes to spacecrafts. Today, space-crafts can go around the world in less than two hours. Tomorrow. Who knows?

About 10 years ago, 16-year-old Boyan Slat was on holiday in Greece. He hoped to see the beautiful ocean like those on TV programs. However, he was surprised to see there were more plastic bags than fish in the sea. Boyan was very sad. “Why can’t we clean it up?” the young Dutchman asked himself. Later, he started the organization — Ocean Cleanup.

To many people, it was impossible to clean up the ocean. But Boyan didn’t think so. He made up his mind to clean up the ocean. Ocean Cleanup made its first plastic-catching machine in 2018, but it broke in the water. A newer model did a better job in 2019, but it would need hundreds of those to clean the world’s oceans. People began to question whether the group could do it.

Boyan didn’t give up. Last year, the team developed a new machine. They called it “Jenny”. Two ships pull “Jenny” through the water to collect floating rubbish. Ocean Cleanup tested it in the ocean. It worked! It pulled out 9,000 kilos of rubbish. Boyan and his team plan to collect 90% of floating plastic from the oceans by 2040.

Although we still have a long way to go, thanks to groups like Ocean Cleanup, we are one step closer to seeing the oceans clean again!

【推荐2】You Can Choose Your Grandma!

Have you heard of Golden Hook? Golden Hook is a group of twenty grandmas and a young man with a clever business idea. They make beautiful, handmade, wool hats and sell them all around the world. You don’t buy Golden Hook hats in a shop. If you want one, you go to their website and choose the style, size and colours you want. Then you look at photos and choose a grandma. The grandma knits (织) the hat by hand just for you. One week later, you get the hat with a special message from the grandma inside. You can see people wearing Golden Hook hats in Paris, London, Tokyo and New York. People love the hats because every hat is different.

Golden Hook was started in Paris, by Jeremy Emsellem. In 2005, when he was 19, Jeremy began knitting hats for fun. He wore the hats in class, and other students really liked them. Everyone wanted one! Jeremy made hats for 50 students, but he didn’t have time to make hats for everyone. Then, in 2007, he visited his old aunt and had an idea. His aunt and her friends were all grandmothers. They didn’t have a job and they didn’t look after their children, so they had lots of time. They were really bored. They were also very good at knitting. Jeremy talked to his aunt’s friends. He asked them if they wanted to make his hats. Six of the grandmothers said “Yes”. In 2008, Jeremy started the Golden Hook company and set up the website. In the first year, they only sold 300 hats, but the company expanded quickly. Soon after, in 2010, Golden Hook employed 20 grandmas. Three years later, in 2012, a famous shop introduced the hats to Tokyo – Japanese people loved the grandma’s hats. In the future, Jeremy’s goal is to have Golden Hook Grandmas all over the world.

With Golden Hook, everyone wins. The customers get excellent hats. The grandmas get money, and something interesting to do. And Jeremy? Jeremy is 25, and the CEO of an international company.