1 . School Activities for Kids and Teens

July is a month of fun－filled activities for kids and teens as long as you know where to find them. When you want some fun activities for July, consider these ideas happening in this month.

2 . Do you know what will happen in the future? Life in the twenty-first century will be very ________ , I suppose. Many changes will take place, but ________ will the changes be?

As we all know the population in the earth is growing ________. There will be a great many ________ in the world and most of them will live ________ than people in the twentieth century.

Computers will be much smaller and ________ and there will be at least one in every ________. And ________ studies will be one of the important subjects in school then.

People will work ________ and they will have more free time for taking exercise, reading, watching TV and traveling all over the world. ________ will be much easier and cheaper. And many more people will go to ________ countries for holidays.

There will be changes in our ________, too. May be no one will eat meat every day. Instead, they eat more fruit and vegetables without pollution. Maybe people will be ________. Work in the future will be different, too. ________ and hard work can be done by robots. Because of this, ________ people will not have enough work to do. This will be a problem.

3 . It happened in Knoxville (a city in Tennessee in the US). A mother said she was feeling ________ as she tried to comfort her autistic (自闭的) son. But a stranger’s act of kindness turned both of their days around.

Ashley Fox was ________ at Walmart with her son Norris, three. Norris picked out a toy dog at the store. ________, it cost more than Fox had ________, so she put it back.

“That’s when Norris just had a meltdown (情绪突然失控). I rushed out of Walmart as fast as I could. He was screaming and ________,” said Fox. She was struggling to get Norris into his car seat when a woman approached her with the ________ her son had wanted in the store.

“The lady came up behind me and she pulled this toy out, and she said, ‘Is this what he was wanting?’ and I said, ‘Oh my god, yes it is.’ I gave it to him and he just ________. It was great. I expressed my ________ to her and offered to pay for this toy. She ________ to let me do it, ________ saying that she understood that because she has ________, too. I just really wanted her to know that it made his night and made his ________. He loves it and I just think it was a really ________ thing that she did,” said Fox.

She posted on Facebook that Norris and the toy are inseparable. Thousands of people have liked the ________ and hundreds have appreciated the act of ________.

“This woman, she didn’t judge. She just helped me. If more people were like that, I feel like we have much less negativity,” said Fox.

Argentina in the late nineteenth century was an     1    (excite) place. Around 1870, it was experiencing     2     economic boom (繁荣), and the capital, Buenos Aires,     3    (attract) many people. Farmers, as well as a flood of foreigners from Spain and Italy, came to Buenos Aires seeking jobs. These jobs didn’t pay well, and the people felt lonely and     4    (disappoint) with their new life in the city. As the unhappy newcomers mixed together in the poor parts of the city, the dance     5    (know) as the tango (探戈舞) came into being.

At the beginning the tango was a dance of the lower classes. It     6    (dance) in the bars and streets. At that time there were many fewer women     7     men, so if a man didn’t want to be left out, his only choice was to dance with another man so that he could attract the attention of the few available women.     8    (gradual), the dance spread into the upper classes of Argentinean society and became more respectable.

The popularity of the tango continued to grow in many other     9    (part) of the world. Soldiers     10     returned to the United States from World War I brought the tango to North America. It reached Japan in 1926, and in 2003 the Argentinean embassy in Seoul hired a local tango dancer to act as a kind of dance ambassador, and promote tango dancing throughout South Korea.

7 . Cimabue, the greatest painter of a Middle Ages in Italy, was surprised one day after his lunch break to discover that a fly had seated itself under the nose of a character that he had been working on. He swatted (重拍) at the fly, but it did not move. He reached out to touch the insect, only to find it was only wet paint. Turning around, he saw that his apprentice (学徒), Giotto, was laughing. Giotto had painted the fly when Cimabue was away, and it looked so real that Cimabue had been completely fooled.

Giotto di Bondone was born into a poor family in a village. Legend has it that one day, when Cimabue was wandering around the countryside, he spotted a young shepherd boy drawing pictures of his sheep, which were so vivid that Cimabue immediately asked him to come to Florence and learn how to paint. That was how Giotto’s story began in Florence, where the young student flourished under Cimabue s instruction and soon surpassed his master in skill.

At that time, people in paintings didn’t look real, and the symbolism of art was difficult for viewers to connect with it. Innovation (创新) was not stressed, so art had remained the same for hundreds of years.

However, Giotto thought art should be something more connected with people in a more realistic way. His masterpieces included the forty major frescoes (壁画) for the Arena Chapel. Adopting many techniques that were uncommon then, he painted people the way he saw them, instead of the overly tall and boxy people that other artists painted. He created three-dimensional space by using perspective, something that had not been done since Roman times.

In addition to painting, Giotto wrote poetry and drew architectural plans. When Giotto was in his sixties, he painted the Ognissanti Madomma, another famous work of art. He continued working until the age of seventy. The ideas Giotto brought to painting throughout his life revolutionized the art world and made him one of the greatest painters ever.

9 . Last weekend, I had an opportunity to serve as a volunteer at a nursing home in another city. I don’t have a car and even the _________ train station is far away from my house. _________， I wasn’t sure how to get there.

I posted a request for a ride on the ride share board. Soon an individual I’d never met _________ that he’d be able to pick me up and drop me off at the station. He said he’d wait until my train arrived before he drove away. My heart _________ and the stress I’d been feeling disappeared immediately and thus our friendship began.

I _________ arriving at the nursing home in time. The tiny team of workers there were _________ for the additional help. We all worked together as a team. I was glad to be a part of this and be of _________ to the elderly.

That evening when my new _________ dropped me off at the station, he noticed that it was in a deserted (空寂无人的) area. So he parked his car and said, “We will wait for the train to come together.” I couldn’t believe his _________.

With five minutes left before the train arrived, he __________ with me stories of his childhood. As a young boy, he __________ to sit near the edge of the railway tracks, waiting __________ for the trains to rush by with all their force. That night he waited with me as my train __________. It didn’t rush by with full force but I left that station __________ the full force of his kindness and generosity. People like him would always __________ me how to love and how to give.