Every year, thousands of young inventors show their ideas at NICEE. Some kids get invited to NICEE. The main goal of NICEE is to help kids know real problems and find ways to __________ them.

To support this __________, many schools now have invention clubs. Kids in the clubs work together. They look __________ ways to make life better. They might invent something to make a job __________ or make people safer.

For example, Lucca wanted to help people __________ his grandmother. She had to wear a breathing mask(面罩) in the hospital. That made it hard for others to hear her __________. So Lucca invented a new mask. It has a microphone. It __________ the person’s voice to a speaker(扬声器). Now users can talk with others.

Inventions can be simple. One winner, Maddox, made a new garden shovel (铁铲). The shovel has marks on __________ to help gardeners know how deep to dig their holes.

__________ kids choose an idea, they have to build a model that works. They cannot spend more than $50. The invention must be something new. It also must fit inside a certain space.

NICEE shows the best inventions from the states. Young inventors get to meet one another. They see others, great ideas. Some of them win prizes. They can __________ learn about ways to sell their inventions.

One of the easiest ways to stop the spread of disease is to simply wash your hands. Twenty seconds of handwashing with soap and water can reduce ______ and save lives. But, many people, especially children, do not have good handwashing habits. One ______ is that children do not wash their hands often enough or long enough. Children may think that it is a ______ thing to do.

To help ______ this problem, Amanat Anand and Shubham Issar from India created a product called the SoaPen（肥皂笔）to turn handwashing into a ______ activity.

As the name suggests, the SoaPen is a pen made out of soap that kids can ______ with. The children draw on their hands with the soap pen and then wash it off. If ______ do not spend enough time washing it off, the colors will remain on the children’s hands. It’s a fun ______ to teach kids how to wash their hands.

Issar said the SoaPen is invented to teach kids good handwashing habits and it ensures that children spend enough time washing their hands. This may be especially ______ in a classroom. Often a ______ does not have the time to ensure that each child has washed their hands ______ .

“Kids actually wash their hands for the proper amount of time ______ they’re drawing on their hands, and under water they have to rub really hard to remove the drawing. So they are actually washing their hands ______ just going under water.”

The product could have a great ______ on public health. The United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund（UNICEF）reports that 1. 5 million children ______ each year as a result of diarrhea. UNICEF says good handwashing habits could reduce that number by 40 percent.

In 1809, Louis Braille was born in a small town in France. At the age of three, Louis hurt one of his own eyes by accident. Before long, the ______ spread to his second eye. And a short time later, Louis could not see and became blind.

Although Louis was blind, he went to school with children who could see. There he learned by ______ . But after two years, his parents took him ______ school. They thought that there weren’t anything for him to learn at school.

Louis’s parents thought it was hard for the blind to live in a small town and he would ______ on the street. So they moved Louis from his small town to the big city when he was ten. His parents sent him to a school for ______ boys in Paris, France. It was one of the first schools for blind people in the world. Louis got many ______ at this school, like making chairs. He also learned how to read. At that time, blind people read by feeling the raised letters on the paper.

But the letters were ______ to read, because too many letters felt the same. It’s not easy to find out the differences among those letters. So Louis wanted to find a better way. Over a few years, he tried to ______ a different touch system (系统) for reading and writing. He used six dots (圆点) instead of twelve to form each letter. It allowed a person’s fingertip to feel the whole symbol without having to move. This ______ let blind people read much faster and easier.

Today we call this form of written language Braille. Louis Braille died in 1852, but his form of written communication ______ .