Project HappyChild NEWS

1st October 2003

[for ongoing updates, see Latest Site News]

Hi there! Welcome to the October issue of Project HappyChild News - on time for once! - after a landmark few weeks where the site has been its busiest *ever*. In the background to all this, we're delighted to say that Charlie Yellow, the little English boy who was unable to eat solid food for the first eight *years* of his life, has now had an amazing series of operations in the USA and is scheduled to be home very soon ... see http://www.charlieyellow.plus.com for more details :)

Some of our unprecedented traffic levels this month have been due to a new area, "THE POTTED LEARNING PAGES". To mark the second anniversary of the Twin Towers tragedy, we have created a special new resource on the Project HappyChild site - something that underlines the goodwill and cooperation now evident in so many areas across the world.

We've put together an *amazing* collection of free resources to help kids with learning school subjects - all on one page! - from an online "Roman Calculator" to learning physics, from GCSE history revision to technology lesson plans, massive environmental resources, animated machines, USA presidents, rulers [political as well as monarchy] in amazing detail going back to *1700*!, biology, inventors, the olympics, algebra, map reading skills, architecture, music, sports, dinosaurs, NASA's education program, art lesson plans ... you really need to see this collection of resources! There's an awesome range of practical activities for kids across the different themes, as well as lots of interactive stuff.

The bulk of the pages featured have obviously been created by people who know their subject-matter deeply and have a real gift for explaining it. Whether it's "the difference between AC and DC", "telling the time", "making a worm bin" or "reading Mayan hieroglyphics", there's evidence throughout of the clarity and insight that identifies the natural teacher :) Hand-in-hand with invaluable reference resources like composers worldwide, artists worldwide, the history of mathematics, US senators, UK MPs, the Museum computer network, the Library of Congress, the CIA World Factbook ... and many more.

Please do pass on the address of The Potted Learning Pages [file-send-page-by-email] to parents, teachers and kids you know :) As far as we know, all these resources are entirely *free* ... and an awesome example of how the Internet enables education resources for children to be shared freely right across the world.

Spellings, Sounds and Meanings: The AH database went live on 10th September 2003 - over 1700 *new* worksheets are now on line, interlinked to the WALL OF WORDS and FIVES resources. Our thanks to Mario in NZ for all his help :)

VINNY LAUWERS: Just a brief note for those of you who followed Vinny Lauwers' epic journey around the world [see our FOCUS page, near the foot] - Vinny is planning another landmark journey to raise funds for needy children [more details on his site - click on the map on our FOCUS page and see "Updates"]. Also his documentary "Spirit of Vision Quest" is finally completed! - enquiries to Phil DeMontignie from Discovery Films who is handling world sales for TV, video and DVD.

HURRICANE ISABEL: We've received an e-mail asking for help for mentally-handicapped children affected by this hurricane - see the Guestbook for more details. If any of you (particularly in the USA) can send small items for their Christmas workshop, this would be very much appreciated :)

CHILDREN IN IRAQ: KCF in Iraq still desperately need funds for their work to help destitute children in Iraq, and those who became homeless when the Baghdad orphanages were looted. See their Appeal on the site here and their amazing new website which includes hundreds of photos of the work they have done for Iraqi children in recent years.

Project HappyChild SHOP: Our thanks as ever to our advertisers (Michael Tipper and "the Dolphin Man") whose funding helps keep this website on line :) See the shop pages for a link to Michael's new "E-book" - "The 77 Habits of Highly Effective Students" which is *finally* available for purchase! - and for links to the "underwater world" galleries where schools and children learning at home can buy beautiful graphics of dolphins, whales and much more for printing in full colour on A4 (for only Ł2.50 each!), for project work and similar.

PAGEBUILDING OVERVIEW: We're aware that many visitors are waiting for specific site resources to be completed :) However obviously, when pagebuilding first started, no-one had *any* idea the site would ever be this big! 8884 pages on line so far, and about 20,000 planned in total.

The site as a whole is a bit like a pyramid ..... we were astonished to discover from a TV programme recently that pyramids weren't built upwards from the bottom to the top :) The foundations were put in place, then a lot of the "middle" with a couple of the sides being finished off, and the "capstone" at the very top, then the last part was finished *downwards*. Logical, when you think about it, really! otherwise all the workers would have had to slide back down from the top when it was all done :)

The foundations for the site here have been in place for a *long* time now, and *some* areas are "more-or-less-finished" ..... but there's a lot that has been started, where masses of information still needs to be "filled in" and cohesively interlinked to what's already in place here. Endless "blocks" still required - but we *do* know, finally, what's needed to complete everything, and it's genuinely just a matter of *time required* to get everything in place now.

The "capstone", if you like, is The Potted Learning pages which bring together the best free resources we've found across the Internet as a whole. These are the pages that will allow kids *everywhere* to have access to the same breadth of educational resources - *regardless* of their personal financial situation. Many pages can be printed off and distributed even if individual children don't have access to computers. You would not *believe* how many requests we get for free materials, from isolated villages in many countries across the world, that only have one or two computers shared between everyone who lives there .....

We estimate the remaining pagebuilding here (and upgrading elements of existing pages, where needed) should take just over one year from now. Not long when compared against the long months from 26th May 1998 which was when the site was first divided into seven "home areas" and the number of pages *really* started to increase! On the basis of what's been done already, the site should be six sevenths completed by mid-November 2003, in terms of overall structure - and after that it should all get progressively easier :) with overall completion possibly by (about) mid-October 2004.

As many of you know, the broad aim of the Project HappyChild site as a whole is linking children across the world - and acting as an vast interchange for matching "help needed" with "help offered". We believe all kids are entitled to *free* high quality education resources, and we also highlight the needs of disadvantaged kids wherever they may be in the world, and ask schools and any of our more affluent visitors who use the site's resources and want to "give something back", to support any of the many charities featured on the site here, that help disadvantaged children.

We really appreciate the support from visitors over the long period of construction so far :) It was never anticipated in anyone's wildest dreams that we'd be clocking up six hundred thousand page views per month *ever*, never mind while we were still pagebuilding :) But it's *your* site as much as ours - we've simply included what people have asked for, as we've gone along, or identified essential educational resources that weren't available free-of-charge on non-commercial sites elsewhere and filled the gaps by building them here at Project HappyChild. Whatever we've needed along the way has materialised from *somewhere* across the world - see our Sponsors page - and we know that many of you have publicised the site endlessly, either on your websites or by circulating the website address to friends and colleagues. Thanks go to *everyone* who has helped to make all this possible :)

Best regards,

Penny.

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