Picture Description — 第二冊

🔊Xylophones, drums, recorders and tambourines! It must be a music class. The girls standing in a line in the back are playing recorders. The boys sitting in the center of the room are playing xylophones. Their teacher stands in front of them. She is conducting. They are all practicing for a music recital next week. The recital is for their parents and other family members.

🔊The young musicians practice almost every day. Some of them practice at home, too. They all want to sound good for the recital. They want their parents to be proud of them. Their teacher is already proud of them because they have worked very hard.

🔊These students have spent many art classes making puppets. First, they drew out the characters on a sheet of paper and colored them with crayons. Then they carefully cut them out with scissors. Next they taped chopsticks to the back for holding the puppet.

🔊Once the puppets were finished, children spent hours playing with them. While they were playing, they learned how to make the puppets move around. After a while, they even got pretty good at it, so they decided to put on a show.

🔊The show was put on in the front of the class. Groups of 4 or 5 children each had a chance to do a show. Their classmates thought it was great fun to watch them act out stories with the puppets they had made. Everyone laughed and giggled cheerfully as the little paper puppets danced around. Even the teacher had fun!

🔊This boy is refilling his stapler. He opens it up and puts some new staples inside. Then he closes it again. Next he tries to staple his papers together. He puts the papers in the stapler and squeezes it, but nothing happens. He puts it on the table and pushes the top of the stapler down, but again nothing happens. He looks at the place where the staples are supposed to come out. There is a staple jammed inside. Again, he opens the stapler and this time he removes the jammed staple using a pen. After closing the top, he tries it again. Click! This time it works and his papers are now stapled together. He puts the stapler and the box of staples into the desk drawer.

🔊It is a rainy day in October. Joe and Steven are terribly bored. They need a way to keep occupied without getting into too much trouble.

🔊Joe has an idea. He is going to use his father’s new digital camera to take pictures of Steven. Steven will pretend to be a motorcycle racer.

🔊Joe’s little brother’s bicycle makes a perfect make-believe motorbike and so Steven hops on. He burns around the living room pretending that he is in a race. Joe acts like a photo journalist and begins snapping pictures. Soon Steven approaches the finish line and raises his hand in victory. Joe tries to capture this glorious moment on his camera for the front page of tomorrow’s sports section.

🔊After a few minutes of pretending, they grow tired of this game and boredom sets in again. Soon they move on, looking for something more exciting to do. Hopefully they don’t find any mischief on their way.

🔊These girls are riding unicycles. Unicycles are very difficult to ride. They require a lot of skill to stay up. Keeping your balance is very tricky and you can easily fall over.

🔊Like a bicycle, a unicycle has a seat, but, unlike a bicycle, it only has one wheel! The seat sits directly above the single wheel and the pedals are on both sides of the wheel (unlike a bicycle where the pedals are between the two wheels and attached to the frame). Another major difference is that the unicycle has no handlebars. This means there is nothing to hold on to or to help you steer.

🔊Unicycles are certainly a lot more difficult to ride than a regular bicycle. It would take many hours of practice to get anywhere on one. But just think: if you were good at it, you could impress your friends or even get a job in the circus. Wouldn’t that be fun?

🔊Picture 1 It is Mother’s Day. Leo (the boy covering his face) and his family have all gathered at Grandma’s house to celebrate. They have even brought a delicious looking cake with them for everyone to make the celebration even more special. Grandma is cutting the cake as Leo and the other grandchildren eagerly wait for a piece.

🔊Picture 2 Now Leo’s father is serving the cake. Leo’s younger sister, the little girl to his left that is drinking from a cup, already has her cake, but Leo is still waiting for his. He patiently watches as his father puts each piece on a paper plate and then hands it to someone. Grandma gets a piece, then mom, then Aunt Lisa and then his cousin Phil. Leo sees each piece go by and wonders if there will be any left for him.

🔊Picture 3 Finally, when the cake is almost half gone, Leo gets a big piece. He takes his fork and eats like it is his last meal. He looks like the happiest boy in the world. To Leo’s right, his elder brother holds the plate right up to his mouth and shovels the cake in as fast as he can. They sure seem to love cake, but then what child doesn’t?

🔊This girl is sweeping the floor with a straw broom. She uses her right hand to operate the broom and her left hand to hold a dustpan. First she sweeps the main part of the floor. Then she sweeps along the edges and in the corners. Next she sweeps the dust and dirt into a dustpan. Finally she puts all the dirt from the dustpan into the garbage. Now the floor is nice and clean.

🔊Straw brooms, like the one she is using here, are very common throughout Taiwan. In Canada we don’t have brooms like this one. Most of our brooms have nylon bristles. Although you still may be able to buy old corn brooms, they are becoming harder and harder to find.

🔊I am roasting. It is so hot in here. The air conditioner must be broken. Maybe I should turn the fan on. Is it plugged in? Yes, good. I think I will set it on low. Hmm, I am still hot. How about medium? No, that isn’t going to do the trick, either. Okay, let’s crank it up to high then. Ah, that’s much better. Now I have to point it in the right direction. Maybe I should just let it blow back and forth. Yes, that would be better for everyone. At last I can relax in my favorite chair and enjoy the breeze.

🔊Everybody loves orange juice. It is a delicious and healthy drink. You can buy it in a bottle or jug almost anywhere, but the pre-made stuff can’t compete with REAL OJ.

🔊This vendor sells the real stuff; freshly squeezed orange juice. She first cuts the oranges in half and then they are put into the juicer on the left.

🔊Inside the juicer, the pieces of orange are forced between two wheels. This squeezes the juice from the orange. The juice drips to the bottom of the machine. Then it runs out the side into a larger container. Some of the pulp and seeds can be strained out at this point.

🔊Finally the golden, vitamin C filled juice is ready and so it is poured into plastic bottles, like the ones on the table. The street vendor can now sell the bottled OJ to thirsty customers.

🔊Someone is cutting up a watermelon. This particular watermelon is yellow, but in Taiwan you can also find red watermelons.

🔊The table is covered with newspapers to make cleaning up easier. The newspaper soaks up some of the juice that would otherwise run all over the table and drip onto the floor.

🔊First he cuts the watermelon in half. Then he cuts the half into half again, making a quarter. The quartered watermelon is then cut into smaller sections because smaller pieces are easier to eat.

🔊Here a boy is eating a piece of the yellow watermelon that was just cut. He leans over the table so that the juice lands on the newspaper. This way he doesn’t make a big mess on the floor. He can also spit out the seeds onto the newspaper. I wonder how many pieces he can eat.