Test

 Pele of Brazil is a soccer player.  In soccer you have to move

the ball with your feet or legs or body or your head, but never

with your hands.  Pele was from a very poor town.  His father

made a soccer ball out of rags for him to play with.  By the time

Pele was eight he was the best soccer player of all his friends. 

When he was fifteen a famous retired soccer player took him to

the big city to try out for the big soccer team.  He tried out

three times before he made the team.  He was so small and skinny

that no one thought he could be good.  Soon he was the best

player on the team.  After two years he went to play the World

Cup for Brazil.  He was the star of the game, and his teammates

lifted him up and carried him off the field.  Pele became the

most famous soccer player in the world.|Glaciers are one of the Earth's most amazing things.

Glaciers are on every continent in the world except Australia.  It

takes a long time for a glacier to form.  In high mountain valleys

the snow falls faster than it can melt.  Soon the snow is packed into

ice.  When the ice becomes deep it gets very heavy.  Gravity

pulls on the heavy glacier and it begins to move down the

mountain.  As soon as a large mass of ice moves it is called a

glacier.  Some glaciers move very fast.  Some glaciers move only

a few feet a year.  When a glacier moves into a warmer land it

melts.  If a glacier moves to the ocean or a lake part of it can break

off and become an iceberg.  During the Ice Age, glaciers covered

a third of the Earth and made the mountains and rivers and

valleys of today.|Have you ever heard of singing sand?  Well there is such a thing. 

In many parts of the world there are sand dunes that make noise. 

In the Mojave Desert the sand makes a loud boom like a tuba.  On

Sand Mountain in Nevada the sand hums like a bass violin.  Some

beaches in the British Isles whistle like flutes.  Just think if

you could put them all together at once.  You would have a band! 

What makes this happen?  The way the wind blows causes the grains

of sand to rub together.  Only when the weather and the shape of the

dunes is just right will the music be heard.  So next time you

are at the beach, maybe you can sing along!|Why are animals so different from each other?  No two kinds of

animals look exactly alike.  This is not an accident.  Animals

fit the places they live, and adapt to the world around them. 

Adapting helps animals survive.  Some animals live in cold

weather and some live in very hot weather.  A polar bear has warm

fur to keep him warm.  A walrus has a lot of fat to keep him

warm.  A penguin has oily feathers to keep the cold water out.  A

lizard has cold blood to keep him cool.  An elephant can use his

trunk to spray himself with water to cool off.  Adapting also

helps animals find food to eat.  A seal is streamlined to swim

very fast to catch fish.  A Monkey has a long tail to hang in

trees and pick fruit.  A hawk has good eyesight to catch small

prey far below.  A beaver has sharp teeth to eat bark off of

trees.  A giraffe has a long neck to reach leaves on tall trees. 

Animals also adapt to protect themselves.  A skunk has an odor to

scare predators away.  A porcupine has sharp quills for

protection.  A kangaroo has strong legs to hop to safety.|Slow as a snail, quick as a bird, green as a jade, black as

night, neat as an egg with a secret inside.  What is it?  Born on

milkweed leaves and eating nothing else, the butterfly is a

caterpillar when it is first born.  How does a caterpillar learn

how to fly?  First the caterpillar spends all his time eating to

fatten up for a long rest.  When he is ready he hangs from his

tail and wiggles out of his skin as if he were taking off his

coat.  Without his skin he looks like a wet green ball.  In a few

hours this hardens into a chrysalis.  For two weeks he stays

there while amazing things happen to him.  Then suddenly as if

out of a deep sleep he starts to wiggle.  The shell cracks, and

out he comes, a beautiful butterfly!|Hello, my name is Larry the Lion.  I am here to tell you about

myself.  I live with my Mom and Dad and my sister Sally.  Our

family lives with other lion families.  This group of lion

families is called a pride.  Dad spends his days with the other

males defending our pride against danger.  Mom is a better hunter

than Dad, so she catches most of our food.  When Sally and I were

born, Mom had to hide us in a safe place until we were two months

old because we were helpless against danger.  Then when she

brought us out we had all the other cubs to play with.  Mom says

that playing with the other cubs strengthens our muscles and

teaches us hunting skills.  Like all cats we are most active in

the morning and evening.  We sleep up to 20 hours a day!  Even

Mom and Dad sleep that much.  Our family is very loving and

close.  We talk to each other with grunts and woofs and meowing

and purring.  When Dad roars he can be heard for miles.  We try

not to make him mad!|Sometimes animals have better senses than people.  A barn owl can

see so well in the dark that he can catch his prey in total

darkness.  A hawk can see small mice far below.  Bats have small

eyes, but use sonar to fly in the dark.  A dog can hear high

pitch sounds that we cannot hear.  Fish do not have ear drums but

hear with a more simple type of ear.  Snakes do not have ears, but

feel vibrations from the ground.  Insects do not have ears, but

are very sensitive to vibrations.  Most animals have a better sense

of smell than people.  Dogs use their noses more than their eyes

and ears.  The kiwi bird has a long beak with nostrils at the end for

finding food in deep holes.  A snake's sense of smell is in his

mouth.  With his tongue the snake collects air and brings it into

his mouth to smell!  Fish smell underwater.  Whales, dolphins and

porpoises cannot smell.  Elephants can smell a mile away.  Cats

cannot taste sweet things.  People have 9,000 taste buds and a

cow has 35,000 and eats only grass!  Birds taste very little.  A

lot of animals have whiskers to help them feel things.  An

elephant has tiny hairs on his trunk to help him feel.|Paul Revere lived in Boston over two hundred years ago.  He was a

very busy man.  When he was fifteen his father died and left him

with a silversmith shop to tend.  Paul made spoons, cups, shoes,

buckles, candlesticks and more.  To make extra money, young Paul

rang the church bells.  In those days the church bells were not

rung only on Sundays.  The church bells were rung for any special

occasion.  Sometimes Paul had to run to town at a moment's notice

up to three times a day to ring the church bells!  Paul married

and had many children.  By this time there were problems between

the Englishmen and the American settlers of New England.  The

Englishmen were charging very high taxes on everything they

brought over from England.  When they put a tax on tea, Paul and

his friends joined a secret club to stop the taxes which were

much too high.  One night they dressed up as Indians, each with

an ax.  They climbed onto the ship with the tea and with their

axes they opened all the boxes of tea and dumped them into Boston

Harbor.  All the others went home, but someone had to ride

to Philadelphia to spread the news.  Paul rode to Philadelphia and

back in such a short time that he became the number one messenger

in the land.  Later Paul became known for his famous midnight ride

where he rode ahead of the British who were coming to begin war,

calling out, "The British are coming, the British are

coming!".|The calendar we use today evolved over thousands of years. 

Long ago calendars were kept a secret by the few men who

knew about them.  The calendar we use today was invented by

the Babylonians in Egypt.  Calendars were later adopted by

Europe and then America.  In the old days, people kept track

of months by counting the moon's cycles.  The word month comes

from the word moon.  The sun was used as a yearly clock.  A stick

was driven into the ground and it took one full year for the

shadow to fall on the same place.  The Babylonians could see five

planets in the sky, with the sun and the moon they saw seven

balls in the sky.  They believed that each of these was a God to

be worshipped.  This is why we now have seven days in a

week.|Dinosaurs lived millions of years ago.  They were very large

reptiles.  No dinosaurs are alive today.  The Earth's climate

changed and they could not survive.  When the dinosaurs died

their bones were covered with sand and mud.  These layers were

pressed over the years into stone.  The dinosaur bones became

fossils.  The first fossil was found by accident.  Then many

diggers looked for more of the dinosaur fossils.  They found many

different types of dinosaurs.  They found dinosaur egg fossils

which had been laid in deep pits.  They even found baby dinosaur

bones.  Some of the dinosaurs ate only plants, and some of them

were very fierce meat eaters that ate any animal they found. 

Some of them could fly like a bird.|William Shakespeare was one of the greatest writers who ever

lived.  He wrote plays and poetry that were translated into many

languages.  His plays are still performed today.  As a boy Bill

lived in England four hundred years ago.  His father was a

farmer's son, who himself was a glove maker.  His mother also came

from a farmer's family.  When he was seven he went to school. 

Only boys went to school in those days.  When he was fourteen his 

father became poor and Bill had to stop going to school.  He

married at eighteen and had three children.  Years later in

London, stage plays became a very popular new art form.  He

became very well known writing two plays or so a year for the

actors to perform.  Some of his plays were funny, some very sad. 

He also wrote beautiful poetry called sonnets.  One of the most

famous plays he wrote was Romeo and Juliet.|@