学进去

“I hate Tuesdays,” said Finn.

“Wait and see,” said his mother. “You haven’t even met Miss Bea.”

Finn was starting piano lessons. Every Tuesday, at 3:30, right after school. At that time, he wanted to run and jump and he was also excited to build his new Star-Blaster. He had it with him, expecting that Miss Bea wasn’t home.

Finn’s mother knocked on the door. “Maybe she went shopping,” said Finn hopefully. But the door opened, and there was Miss Bea. “Hello there, Finn,” she said with a smile. “Come on in.”

Miss Bea’s piano was black and shiny. Finn sat on the bench. He held on to his Star-Blaster.

“That looks like a special box,” said Miss Bea. “Is it something new?”

“It’s going to be a Star-Blaster,” said Finn.

“You’re a builder,” said Miss Bea. “That’s very good. I’m sure that you can understand how this piano works. Why don’t you start by pressing some keys?”

Finn pressed some white keys. Then he pressed some black keys. Then he pressed a white one and a black one at the same time. It didn’t really make a song, but Miss Bea said she liked it.

Then, she opened the piano.

“I didn’t know it had a lid (盖子),” said Finn. “Every piano does. It has hammers, too,” said Miss Bea. “Stand on the bench and look inside.”

The hammers were pieces of wood with round ends. Some were fat. Some were skinny. There was a row of strings (弦) in front of the hammers.

Then Miss Bea had a question. “If you were going to build a piano, how many pieces would you need?”

“Fifty?” guessed Finn. “More,” said Miss Bea.

“A hundred and forty-two?” guessed Finn. “Many more.”

Finn guessed all the way up to nine hundred and fifty-seven, but it was “More, more, more.”

“Ten thousand pieces,” she finally said.

“Whoa,” said Finn. “My Star-Blaster only has sixty-two. But it’s still going to be hard to put it together.”

“But it will be worth (值得) it,” said Miss Bea. “Piano lessons are like that, too. You work and work to build a song. You use keys and hammers and strings. Your songs can be fast or slow, high or low, soft or loud.”

“I want to build a fast, loud one,” said Finn. “You will, when your fingers learn to run and jump. But for now, our time is up,” said Miss Bea.

On the way home, Finn asked his mother how many songs there were to learn. “There must be thousands,” she said. “Especially if you practice.”

“Then I’d better start soon,” said Finn. He looked at his building fingers. “How many days,” he asked, “till Tuesday?”

Learn to Love Yourself

Do you ever compare yourself to other people and wish you could be more like them? We are all different in our own way. Self-acceptance (自我接纳) can help you feel happier and better about yourself.

What is self-acceptance?

Self-acceptance means learning to accept the things that make you who you are. As well as being thankful for what you’re good at, like sports, science or singing in the school choir, self-acceptance also means valuing (重视) the parts of you that don’t shine very brightly, like being forgetful or untidy. A 12-year-old girl, Lily, says self-acceptance means “knowing your own weaknesses and strengths (强项), and accepting who you are no matter what other people say or think.”

Why is self-acceptance good for you?

When you accept who you are, you worry less about things you can’t change. This makes you feel happier and more confident (自信的). The Anna Freud Centre, a charity (慈善机构) that helps young people, says everyone can feel that they have to be perfect, but that makes us forget about the little things that make us special, because we’re so busy trying to meet someone else’s standards. Learning to accept everything about yourself can also help you find what you’re really good at. For example, some people may find letters or numbers hard to read, but they might have strengths in other things, like finding good ways to work out problems.

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Start by making a list of all the things you like about yourself. Maybe you’re good at cooking, or people find it easy to talk to you. Also, try saying kind, happy things to yourself in a mirror (镜子) every morning. Think up ways to treat yourself, such as taking a long bath, watching your favorite film, or eating delicious ice-cream. But don’t forget it’s important to eat healthy food and get enough sleep.

Studies have shown that humans have the ability to understand the gestures (手势) of apes. That is a little surprising, because most people haven’t spent much time with apes.

Humans use words to talk to each other. But we also point, nod, and use our hands to show what we mean. Apes have their own gestures to show what they mean. Chimpanzees and bonobos are two kinds of apes. They are closest to humans. They use about 80 different gestures to show what they mean.

Scientists have learned the meanings of these gestures by studying Chimpanzees and bonobos for years. They share over 90% of the same gestures. Scientists have studied how apes use gestures. But for the longest time, no one studied if humans could understand the gestures of apes.

Researchers Kirsty Graham and Catherine Hobaiter at the University of St. Andrews decided to test this idea. They wanted to see if humans with no training or experience could understand the gestures of apes.

The researchers made a game for people to play online. The game was simple. People watched short videos of apes making a gesture. Then they had to choose the correct meaning of the gesture out of four possible (可能的) answers. For the videos, the researchers chose ten of the most common gestures used by apes. Thousands of people played the game.

The researchers were surprised to find that for some of the gestures, people were able to choose the correct meaning about 80% of the time. One example of this was the gesture of touching the mouth. People correctly guessed it meant “give me that food”.

The scientists believe humans may have a natural (天生的) ability to understand the gestures of apes. But it’s not clear why. Humans and other apes all developed from an earlier kind of ape. One possibility is that the body language of these gestures has been passed down to all apes from the common ape ancestor. Another possibility is that the gestures are natural because humans and apes share similar (相似的) body shape and need to communicate similar ideas.