【推荐1】April Fool’s Day is traditionally a day to play jokes on others. No one knows how this holiday began but it was thought to be stared in France.

Some of the tricks on April Fool’s Day are very simple, such as saying, “Your shoe’s untied!” Some are carefully planned. Setting a roommate’s alarm clock back an hour is a common trick. Some newspapers, TV channels and well-known companies publish false news stories to fool people on April 1st. For example, a British short film once shown on April Fool’s Day was about spaghetti farmers and how they harvest their crop from the spaghetti trees. Whatever the trick is, the trickster usually ends it by yelling to his victim (受害者), “April Fool!”

Each country celebrates April Fool’s Day differently. In France, the April Fool’s Day is called “April Fish”. The French fool their friends by sticking a paper fish on their friends’ backs and when someone discovers this trick, they will yell “April Fish!”. In England, tricks can be played only in the morning. You must play your April Fool’s Day joke before midday, otherwise you will be the fool. If a trick is played on you, you will be called a “noodle”.

April Fool’s Day is a “for-fun-only” holiday. Nobody is expected to buy gifts for friends or to take their friends out to eat in a fancy restaurant. Nobody gets off work or school. It’s simply a fun holiday. But it’s a holiday on which one must remain forever vigilant (警惕的), for he or she may be the next April Fool!

【推荐2】_______ Thai people are used to eating rice as a meal. Also, most Thai people do not sit down to eat a proper meal because they usually eat when they are hungry, especially kids and teenagers.

_______ Fashion (时尚) is full of culture. The Tang Costume (唐装) stands for Chinese history and fashion culture. The Tang Costume got its name because China became known to other countries during the Han and Tang Dynasties.

_______ In Australia, people celebrate the New Year from January 1st to January 6th. It is a public holiday and many people love to spend this day with their family and friends.

_______ There are two kinds of schools in England. One is the state school where parents do not pay money. And ninety percent of children go there. The other is the private school where parents pay some money for their children to go.

_______ Whether they’re good manners or not depends on where you are. Some East Africans spit (吐口水) four times as a kind of blessing (祝福). In parts of Polynesia, it is bad to be seen eating. They politely turn their backs to each other when they are eating food.

Learning with Legos For more than 60 years, Lego bricks（砖块） have developed children's imaginations. Now, a new form of these toys is called Lego Braille Bricks. It is being tested around the world.

Lego Braille Bricks are designed to help people learn Braille（盲文）. That's a system of writing in which letters are replaced by raised knobs（凸起）. The small knobs on the bricks are put as Braille letters. Blind children can use their fingertips to read the knobs to learn Braille. According to the World Health Organization, 36 million people worldwide are blind. In the United States, only 10% of blind children learn Braille. Lego Braille Bricks can help change that.

Braille Bricks will be launched（上市） by Lego in 2020. For some schools, it will be free. The Danish Association of the Blind was one of the first organizations to come up with the idea of using Lego bricks to teach Braille. Thorkild Olesen, the president of the organization, is blind. He says many teachers don't have the tools and skills to help kids learn Braille. So they teach with audio tools, such as audio books. "Like any other people, we need to express ourselves in writing, " Olesen told TIME for Kids." Audio is great. But it can never replace Braille. Braille is the most important tool for us. It is the best way for blind people to learn to spell correctly, write, and read like common people."

Olesen's organization shared his idea for Braille Bricks with the Lego Foundation（基金会）. Olesen explained to the toy maker that the knobs on Legos are similar to Braille letters. Stine Storm is a project manager at the Lego Foundation. She liked the idea of turning Lego bricks into a learning tool. "It was a fun and playful way to teach Braille to blind children," she says, "Lego Braille Bricks will also have printed letters on them that match the Braille letters, so sighted children and blind children can play with the Legos together."

【推荐2】There are many inventions that have caused great changes in the world. Here is a short introduction of the maglev train(磁悬浮). The history of the maglev train started in the beginning or the 1900s. The American Robert Goddard and the French Emic Bachelet came up with the idea of frictionless(无摩擦的）trains. But scientist didn't succeed in making it at that time.

About 60 years later, the Japanese started their research on maglev transportation. After many years of experiments, the Japanese began to build their first test line 7km in 1975, and finished it in 1977. Many test runs started in July 1977 with a speed of 517 km/h. In 1990, Japan built the Yamanashi Maglev test line. This test line was 42.8 km long and the first running test was held in 1997.

The Germans also started research on the maglev train in the early 1970s. It took them ten years to make the first track( 轨 道 )model. In 1993, the longest nonstop test running was 1,674 km. That same year the speed reached 450km/h.

China finished a 30-km-long maglev train line in Shanghai in 2003. This is the first commercial ( 商业 的 ）maglev train line in the world. Although this project cost over l billion dollars, we should feel proud of it.