Dance Classes
Ballet
Ballet teaches grace, posture （姿势） and flexibility. Students focus on the use of proper ballet items（物品）, expanding their knowledge of classical ballet techniques and improving motor skills for classical ballet practice. The class is a formal ballet class.
Age: 8-10
Date: September 7, 2019-May 16, 2020
Time: 10: 30 am-12: 00 am on Saturdays
Creative Movers
Students can explore creative movement, balance, focus, the development of skills, motor planning and balance. The class helps build strength, flexibility and self-confidence, and allows children to realize expression in a positive and encouraging environment. Children use their imagination to celebrate movement and have lots of fun.
Age: 3-5
Date: September 7, 2019-January 18, 2020
Time: 9: 00 am-9: 45 am on Saturdays
Jazz
Jazz includes movements from both classical ballet and dance techniques. This class will focus on traditional Jazz dance. Students will be introduced to jazz-style rhythms and movements. In order to ensure proper placement for your child, we invite all students to participate in a sample（示例）class. Students and parents work with program staff to meet students' personal dance goals.
Age: 5-6
Date: September 7, 2019-May 16, 2020
Time: 2: 00 pm-3: 00 pm on Saturdays
Hip Hop
Students will be introduced to several different aspects of hip hop dance including Popping, Locking, Breaking and Tutting in a high-energy environment. Our hip hop instructors are highly knowledgeable and will provide students with a wonderful view of hip hop dance.
Age: 7-10
Date: September 7, 2019-May 16, 2020
Time: 1: 00 pm-2: 00 pm on Sundays
I'm a 34-year-old man, married, live in a nice house, and have a successful career as an educational consultant (顾问). But my life was not always so great. My learning disability made my school days very challenging from an early age. I went to a special school where I got plenty of extra help. Still, I suffered the rest of my school days in public schools.
My life improved greatly when I discovered art. The art world gave me a chance to express myself without words. I went to a workshop and gradually got good at making things with clay (黏土). Here I learned my first important lesson: disabled as I was in language, I could still be smart and well express myself with clay. And my confidence came along.
I got my next lesson from rock climbing. It was a fun thing but I was scared from the start. I soon noticed it wasn't a talent thing; it was practice. So I did it more. After about five years of climbing, I found myself in Yosemite Valley on a big wall. I learned that if you fall in love with something and do it all the time, you will get better at it.
Later I decided to apply my previous experience to leaning how to read and write. Every day I practiced reading and writing which I used to avoid as much as possible. After two hard years, I was literate (有读写能力).
Having gone through the long process with art, rock climbing, and reading and writing, now I've got to a point in my life where I know I am smart enough to dive into an area that is totally unknown, hard, but interesting.
The British are known for their sense of humour. However, it is often difficult for foreigners to understand their jokes. The main point to remember is that the British often use understatement.
Understatement means saying less than you think or feel. For example, if someone gets very wet in a shower of rain, he might say, "It's a little damp (潮湿的) outside." Or, if someone is very impolite and shouts at another person, someone else might say, "She isn't exactly friendly." Understatement is often used in an annoying situation or to make another person look silly. Understatement plays an important part in British humour.
Another key to understanding British humour is that the British like to make fun of themselves as well as others. They often laugh about the silly things that happen to our everyday life when someone falls over in the street. They also like to make jokes of people from different classes of society. They like to make jokes about their accents (口音), the way they dress and the way they behave. What's more, the British love to watch comedies (喜剧) about people who do not know how to behave in society. The famous Mr Bean is a good example of this kind of humour.
Mr Bean is the role played by British actor Rowan Atkinson in 1990. Mr Bean doesn't talk often, and instead he uses his body movement and facial expressions to make people laugh. Perhaps what makes Mr Bean so funny is that he does things that adults in the real world wouldn't do. Mr Bean is popular in many countries round the world because you do not have to speak English to understand the humour. As a result, British sense of humour has become well known to many people.
My son was entering Grade 1. He was a bit nervous because he knew his best friend would not be in his new class. I explained to him that even though his best friend would not be in his class, he would still have some of his old classmates.
On the first day of school when the class list was posted, I was shocked! My son had zero former classmates in his class. None. Not one.
How could this happen?
I asked my friend who works with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board. She explained, "Many largely populated schools often shuffle (重组) the kids around each year to encourage new friendships."
If schools are actively trying to place two best friends in different classes simply to shake things up, I think it is a blunder.
I was lucky enough to attend the same primary school all the way through. It was a small class and our group of students moved through each grade together. We felt like brothers and sisters. It was wonderful.
While it may be good to shake things up a bit in the older grades, it seems almost cruel (残忍的) to separate good friends in the younger grades without good cause.
One mom named Karen says that her son is always starting a new grade without any close friends. At first, she thought it was a good idea. Then she realized one thing—her son does not have a "best friend", which makes her pretty worried. In fact, she thinks that he does not have any close friends because his classmates are always changing.
Part of a school's responsibility is to provide a safe and comfortable space for children to learn and grow. If that environment is always changing—causing terrible results—perhaps it is time to rethink this practice.
How to Be Creative
Most of us think that creativity is a quality (品质) belonging only to artists, writers, or dancers, rather than ourselves. The following tips are a great beginning for developing our creativity.
Get out of your comfort zone
We eagerly accept the familiar and fear the unknown. Break out of your usual patterns and welcome creativity into your life. As said earlier, the human brain was designed to recognize patterns. In fact, our comfort zone is nothing more than a collection of patterns. As we become more efficient at recognizing and using patterns, we rely less on creativity to find new paths. We should force ourselves out of our comfort zones and open up new possibilities.
Try different things
If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. We are creatures of habits and routines, and creativity hates routines (常规). If you usually drive to work, take the subway for a few days. Break your routine, experiment and try something new. New things are often creative, but the same old thing never is.
Having a great idea is not enough, you must work to make it a reality. Have you ever seen a new product and realized that you thought of the same thing long ago? Yet someone else is making money with "your" idea. The difference between a dreamer and a doer is action. Do whatever it takes to bring your ideas to life. If you can put them into practice, you are well on your way to improving your creativity in all areas of your life.
A. Take action
B. Seek several options
C. Think from the other person's point of view.
D. If you normally eat in the office, have lunch under a tree.
E. We continue to create patterns for almost everything we do.
F. The truth is that we are all born with the ability to be creative.
G. We all have great ideas sometimes, but only a few people turn their ideas into realities.
A little girl created a perfect gift for her mother's birthday. It was a drawing of a 1 on white paper with the words "For mom: love, love, love" decorated with hearts. She folded (折叠) her letter, but then she 2 it.
For most people, that would be the 3 of this story, but this story had a different result. James Carrell found the letter. He had just 4 his mother, wishing her a happy birthday. After he hung up, Carrell saw the 5 on the ground outside of a hardware store in Manvel. "I 6 it was a gift," said Carrell. "I opened it up and saw the flower and hearts. It really 7 me." Carrell thought the letter would 8 someone's day and that maybe he could find the owner, so he posted it on the Internet. The message moved a lot of people, 9 one man.
"I was sitting at my friend's house and saw a man's 10 ," said Carrell.
The comments included one from Robert Alvarado. He wrote, "I can't 11 you found my baby's letter." Carrell reached Alvarado to 12 the letter. It took a few days, but the men finally met on Thursday night.
"Eventually the letter made it home," said Alvarado. "We are 13 for what James Carrell did." We often forget the power of 14 things, but for this family from Alvin, Carrell's small act left a 15 impression.
Lindsay didn't feel herself last month. She was a really good student, but to her anxiety, her grades were falling. That was because she sometimes felt (confuse) about what the teacher said and sometimes had trouble (concentrate) on her study.
Her (behave) attracted her father's attention. He asked what had happned her, but she refused (communicate) with him and just cried. Worried that it affected her daily life terribly, the father turned to his neighbor for help, is a knowledgeable architect.
The architect told him unique solution to the problem. He recommended that he (plan) a trip for his daughter. By getting close to nature and experiencing an (extreme) different life, Lindsay did recover from it. If you have such signs, don't worry. Maybe travelling (be) a good choice for you.
