3 . Author Walter Dean Myers died at the age of 76 after a brief illness. Walter Dean Myers was the author of more than 100 books for children and young adults and received many top awards.

The prolific author was loved for his vivid description of the lives of African American children, and for writing books for young people that covered different subjects. “Myers has written about all those subjects with deep understanding and a hardwon, qualified sense of hope, ” said Leonard S. Marcus in 2008.

He was born in 1937 and was adopted by Florence Dean and Herbert after his mother died while giving birth to his younger sister. They loved him very much and his mother read to him from a very young age. Reading pushed him to discover worlds beyond his landscape.

He began writing at an early age. He wrote well in high school and an English teacher recognized this and advised him to keep on writing no matter what happened to him. “It’s what you do, ” she said.

He dropped out of high school at 17 and joined the army. After finishing his service, he entered a dark period in his life. Myers began writing at night to pull himself through that miserable time. In an essay published in The New York Times earlier this year, Myers described how a short story by James Arthur Baldwin helped change the course of his life. “I didn’t love the story, but I was lifted by it, ” he wrote, “for it took place in Harlem, and it was a story concerned with black people like those I knew. By humanizing the people who were like me, Baldwin’s story also humanized me. The story gave me a permission that I didn’t know I needed, the permission to write about my own landscape, my own map.”

“I write books for the troubled boy I once was, ” he wrote, “and for the boy who lives within me still.”

5 . When going out to dine with kids, you need to know the places where kids are not only welcomed, but really catered for. The following are some of the best family-friendly restaurants and cafés.

It is located in a park in Mona Vale. Near the café is a fantastic fenced children's playground, famous for playground facilities including a bike track, walking tracks and a dog walking beach.

Business Hours:

Monday to Sunday: 9 am to 4 pm

The weather can sometimes influence the closing time. If you are unsure, please call 9986 0980.

Welcome to our revolutionary kid-friendly family bistro(小餐馆）－where your kids are welcome to play, draw, slip and slide. Our menu includes sandwiches and chips. Your children will receive a free cup of popcorn with every kid's meal purchased.

Business Hours:

Monday to Sunday: 11 am to 7 pm

Tel: 9816 4052

It offers the perfect family dinner. The children can eat and then play in the park opposite the restaurant. Children will be kept amused by the kids' menus, which feature coloring-in activities. Children are able to color in a picture of a cow with crayons.

Business Hours:

Monday to Friday: 4 pm to 6 pm

Saturday to Sunday: 3 pm to 7 pm

Tel: 9460 6877

It is a unique environment where your child can play safely while you relax in the central cafe area. The indoor playground includes facilities for children up to 11years old. There are plenty of food options for the kids, including home-made sausage rolls.

Business Hours:

Monday to Thursday: 9 am to 5 pm

Friday to Saturday: 9 am to 6 pm

Tel: 9916 0350

6 . AQUILA Children’s Magazine is the most intelligent read for curious kids. Full of enthusiastic articles and challenging puzzles, every issue covers science, history and general knowledge. AQUILA is a quality production, beautifully illustrated with contemporary artwork throughout.

 Intelligent reading for 8-12-year-olds

 Cool science and challenging projects

 Inspires self-motivated learning

 Exciting new topics every issue

AQUILA is created and owned by an independent UK company. It has 28 pages, printed on high-quality paper and there are no advertisements or posters. Instead it is full of well-written articles, thought-provoking (令人深思的) ideas and great contemporary artwork. Each monthly issue is centred around a new topic.

AQUILA works as a superb learning extension to current primary (or KS2 and KS3) curriculum (课程), but it is much more than that! Entertaining and always surprising, AQUILA is recommended because it widens children’s interest and understanding, rather than encouraging them to concentrate only on their favourite subjects. It gives children a well-rounded understanding of the world, in all its complexity.

The concepts in AQUILA can be challenging, requiring good comprehension and reading skills. Eight years is usually a good age to start. Some gentle interest from an adult is often helpful at the start.

In 2021 AQUILA will have been in publication for 29 years, but it has never appeared in newsstands or shops. We are subscription only.

AQUILA Subscription

UK：12 Months￡55－4 Months￡30

Europe：12 Months￡60－4 Months￡35

World：12 Months￡70－4 Months￡35

Birthdays

Select the Birthday option, write a gift message and choose the birthday month. We will dispatch to arrive at the start of the month you have entered. The package posts in a blue envelope marked “Open on your birthday”.

7 . Giving children music lessons won’t just lead them to a world of melody——it could also greatly improve their language skills.

While numerous studies have shown that learning an instrument can impact things like language ability, it wasn’t understood if this was a side effect of a general improvement to cognitive skills, or something that directly affected language processing.

Now, we know more about that, from a study of 74 Chinese kindergarten children，led by neuroscientist Robert Desimone. “The children did show improvements in word discrimination (辨别)，particularly for consonants(声母),”explains Desimone.

For the study, Desimone’s team randomly divided the Mandarin—speaking children into three groups. One group received a 45-minute piano lesson three times a week, while another received extra reading instruction classes. The third group acted as controls, taking no extra lessons beyond their usual routine. The classes lasted for six months, after which the children were tested on their ability to discriminate words based on differences in tone, consonants,o r vowels.

The test results showed that the children who had taken piano lessons performed significantly better at discriminating between words, compared against the children who took extra reading lessons. Compared to the control group, both the music learners and the extra reading group did better in discriminating words.

To learn why these differences happen, the researchers studied the children’s brain activity via electroencephalography (EEG) and found the piano group showed greater sensitivity to tonal changes. The thinking goes, having music lessons helped develop this tonal sensitivity, which partly explains better word discrimination.

It’s also worth emphasizing that the musical education helped these children outperform their peers in language tests—even beyond the results of kids who took extra reading classes. “It’s better than extra reading. That means schools could invest in music,” Desimone says．

8 . For many people, Christmas can be a magical day filled with delight. But for those down on their luck or disadvantaged, it can be a time of sorrow and disappointment. That's why the countries of the British Commonwealth have set aside the day after Christmas as Boxing Day, and its purpose was to bring a bit of magic to those who could use it. So what is Boxing Day all about apart from being the day after a Christmas and a time when many of us flock to the sales?

Every December 26, going at least as far back as 1833, the United Kingdom and other countries that are part of the British Commonwealth—including Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India—have observed Boxing Day as an opportunity to provide some holiday joy to those who most need it.

There are competing stories behind the name Boxing Day. One is that it refers to the giving of “Christmas boxes,” a term that originated in the 17th century to describe gifts, money and other leftovers from Christmas that would be given to their servants and employees for having worked on Christmas Day. Basically, Christmas Boxes were holiday bonuses for the working class. The other is that it refers to the “alms boxes” that would traditionally appear in churches for the purpose of collecting money which would be distributed to the poor. The name is a reference to charity donations

The day is still a national holiday in many parts of the British Commonwealth, and while some people still give back to the less fortunate on Boxing Day, it now has the same meaning with spending up big at a department store.

This year, on December 26, consider observing your own charitable Boxing Day Extend longstanding traditions of giving. To borrow from How the Grinch Stole Christmas, your heart just may grow three sizes… instead of your wallet shrinking three sizes!