Project HappyChild NEWS

December 2002

[for ongoing updates, see Latest Site News]

Hi there! A huge welcome to all our new subscribers - site traffic has been off the graph this month and e-mail correspondence likewise.

After *numerous* problems with the visitor counts crashing and returning to zero, we've put a link next to visible counters, to the "about us" page, where we're now keeping an ongoing record of accurate visit levels, for some sort of back-up when the visible count is way out.

KEYWORDS FOR LEARNING: We're delighted to say that Mario in New Zealand has been able to send through masses of finished word search pages - over 130 so far - and these have been linked in from the main wordsearch index page. Free-to-print wordsearch pages now include the Human Body, reptiles, invertebrates, insects, trees, major river systems, countries, football, Pokémon, fish, rodents, cattle, ships and many more.

The "books on line" wordsearch pages have been linked to on-line versions of the texts, including "A Christmas Carol", "Frankenstein", "The Wind in the Willows", "The Happy Prince", "The Jungle Book" and many more children's favourites, and there are also word searches for Shakespeare's plays (histories, tragedies and comedies), the works of Charles Dickens, the Bible, Prime Ministers and Kings & Queens of England.

There are still a few to be added, but now that the programming side of things is sorted, we'd welcome keyword lists from visitors for many of the other areas of learning - click here for the main index to categories and links to wordsearches already on line.

DIRECTORY CHARITIES - A direct e-mail address has been added for CLIMB (Children Living with Inherited Metabolic Diseases) and we have made a link to POD's website from their Directory entry.

POD has been entertaining children in hospital for an astonishing 25 years now, and just Ł600pa enables a new children's ward to be added to their list of monthly shows (there are still *many* hospitals on their waiting list). Fundraising and corporate donations are always greatly appreciated [click here for info] and POD's ultimate aim is "to provide shows at all hospitals and hospices which admit children".

The entry for the Elisabeth Svendsen Trust (riding therapy for children with special needs and disabilities) has also been updated, with a link to their appeals page requesting funds towards the provision of a Sensory Room for special needs children at their Birmingham location [also added to the UK Appeals page].

REYE'S SYNDROME - A link has been added to the website of the National Reye's Syndrome Foundation of the UK, along with a direct e-mail address - click here for their Directory entry.

Reye's Syndrome is less in the news these days, with more parents aware of the possible dangers of aspirin for children, but the NRSF page quoting the most recent advice of the Medicine Control Agency [April 2002, at time of writing this] will be a sobering read for many parents [click here].

DEAFBLIND CHILDREN - "Last hour's salary of 2002" Appeal

With Christmas approaching, spare a thought for deafblind children who don't see the sparkling decorations on the Christmas tree nor hear the Christmas carols on radio and TV. If you'd like to make a difference, why not donate your last hour's salary of 2002? Whatever you earn, just one hour's salary can help towards the cost of a sensory toy for a deafblind child.

SENSE accept online donations here.

CHILD FISH WORKERS: Rayan at East Coast RDT has sent us some photos of the child labourers in Tamilnadu. Click here to see the pictures - any help anyone can offer will, we know, be much appreciated. So many of the organizations which write in to Project HappyChild from distant areas of the globe feel isolated and have no other way of making their appeals heard; we are grateful to those among our visitors who have answered such appeals and brought hope to seemingly-forgotten communities.

The free educational resources on this site continue to bring many new visitors to Project HappyChild and we very much appreciate the active involvement of so many visitors now in helping the disadvantaged children - wherever they may be - whose circumstances were the original prompt for creating this site. Last month we had over 83,000 separate visitors - with 2.3 million "hits" - our thanks go to the many individuals and organizations who continue to publicise Project HappyChild with links from their websites in a growing number of countries worldwide.

ACCELERATED LEARNING: One of our most significant free resources has always been Michael Tipper's pages on Accelerated Learning. Michael is working flat out these days with presentations to schools and businesses, but somehow he has always found the time to write articles for Project HappyChild, 10 months out of 12 over the year as a whole. His latest feature article is now on line: A Teacher's View on Education. An interesting and thought-provoking read, especially in view of recent press coverage of Government criticism of the ineffectiveness of current teaching methods in many classrooms.

SCHOOLS INTERCHANGE: Our thanks to Rik who wrote in with details of North Yorkshire schools listings. These have been added to Schools England N-Z - click here for details. Updates from visitors with new or changed links to established schoolnets are always much appreciated; we can't yet always add these immediately due to other demands on the pagebuilding schedule, but this should ease off within the next few months.

And finally - SPELLINGS, SOUNDS & MEANINGS. Judging by visit levels, many people are already making use of the templates for making crosswords, poem writing, MC lyric writing and lateral thinking, even before the Sounds Database goes live. We're delighted to say that Mario has been able to run the first batch of worksheets (for around 800 pages), but we still have some work to do before the first set of 1000 worksheets can be linked in en masse from the Sounds Database. From a pagebuilding point of view it's simplest if these can be uploaded and linked in, in complete blocks, so you'll need to bear with us just a little while longer ....

Everyone's patience is appreciated (as are the e-mails about the whole SSM project). Work is continuing on the databases (probably around 70% done now) and once the programming and databases are completed, this whole resource of around 5000 free worksheets should be fully available for use in schools and homes.

Wishing all of you a happy and peaceful Christmas and a fulfilling New Year,

Best regards,

Penny.

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