Area 6 : News & Views

LATEST SITE NEWS

APRIL 2003

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30^th April 2003: EVENTS CALENDAR: News has just come in of a significant event in a few weeks' time:

"Big Feat For Little Feet ® will stage its first London walk on Sunday 8th June 2003 in support of Anti-Slavery International's work to end exploitative child labour. There are an estimated eight million children worldwide suffering in slavery. Forced to work long hours in harsh conditions, they are denied their freedom and rights to education. This is your chance to help ..."

Anti-Slavery's directory entry is here.

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26^th April 2003: ACCELERATED LEARNING: Michael Tipper's latest Feature Article is now on line - "Mnemonics you have sent in". Thanks go to the many visitors who write in to Michael - his schedule doesn't often allow personal replies but all e-mails sent in to him are read :)

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26^th April 2003: KURDISTAN CHILDREN'S FUND: We're more than a little concerned that no donations have actually reached KCF via the on-line PayPal facility - funds are desperately needed and a test donation made by Maureen of KCF wasn't debited from her credit card statement (although a subsequent one went through fine). We'd be interested in feedback from any visitors who have tried to donate via PayPal on the KCF page - click here for details of the Appeal - or if anyone else would like to try out the donation facility and let us know what happens, we would appreciate this!

PayPal make a small administration charge of $1.85 to your credit card account, to set up the facility with them (only on the first time you do this), but actual donations from your account go through at the amount specified (eg if you donate $7 and have a £sterling account, the actual £stg equivalent is debited from your account (KCF get the $7 less a small admin charge). Similarly if you give £ but your currency is US$, Canadian$, euros or yen, you pay the equivalent amount in your own currency with no surcharges for the actual currency conversion.

If anyone would be kind enough to try giving to KCF through PayPal and let us know if it works for their donation, we'll pass on details to KCF :) Things are really desperate just now, with KCF also having received repeated calls from the orphanages in Baghdad for help - one of their people has driven down from Northern Iraq and discovered the orphanages have been looted and although he's been able to round up hundreds of the children, there is no money to feed them .... If you're able to test out the PayPal donate facility for us, however tiny your donation, be assured that it *will* make a difference :)

25^th April 2003: FREE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: When we originally started building the French language resource in the Freeway area of the site, it was our intention (one day!) to add both classical Greek and Latin.

Other pagebuilding commitments have prevented us from building such a resource on line here - so we're delighted to say we have now located a very comprehensive Classics site with free, fully-downloadable, public domain Latin and Greek grammars, along with a wide range of classical e-books from Greek and Roman authors. This free resource is supported by Miami University (Oxford, Ohio).

We've linked to the Latin and Greek grammars and e-books both from Freeway and from our main index to free educational resources worldwide.

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24^th April 2003: EVENTS CALENDAR: We've added a new event to the already-massive Events Calendar for this year, "Rory Bremner at the Savoy" - click here for further details of this and other WellBeing events. Early booking recommended! - celebrity events are always very popular ....

We've also updated the Charity Catalogues page with details of current phone numbers for Wellbeing brochures and Xmas cards. Currently we're in the midst of a massive overhaul of the Project HappyChild Directory and we'll be adding quite a few more new links in addition to those on the Charity Catalogues, Booklists, Events, Syndromes Links and Resources Required pages.

Visitors are asked to bear with us whilst the Directory is being updated! - we'll be replacing the pages one at a time, as this is a fairly major task, but this whole area will be significantly more cohesive when the new pages are all on line.

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23^rd April 2003: Our thanks to Louise Gentzel at ReliefWeb [contact information for UN relief agencies, NGOs etc. and a directory of humanitarian organizations] for advising us of a broken link - this has now been updated on our Free Educational Resources page [see under International Affairs].

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23^rd April 2003: Our apologies that this page hasn't been updated for a while - *masses* going on here as usual! - but none of it quite ready for upload just yet. The first part of the Sounds Database (AR sounds) is completed and currently with Mario in New Zealand for page generation - we'll put details up on this page as soon as the first 450+ free worksheets go on line.

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4^th April 2003: We're delighted to say that the April 2003 issue of Project HappyChild News is now on line - click here. Sorry for the delay! - much of it was "ready to go" on Tuesday 1st April, but there were a couple of additional items we really needed to include and that hasn't been possible until now :) Time permitting, we'll be despatching e-mail copies to Newsletter subscribers some time later today.

3^rd April 2003: Due to the current Iraq conflict, the Kurdistan Children's Fund is struggling to cope with the increasing need for their services - they have already moved their children from the homes and orphanages and have set up 6 camps in different areas of Suleimaniy and Kirkuk but they are in critical need of more funding.

In 1991, after the Iraq/Kurdish uprising, thousands of children died from the lack of food, water, medicine and shelter simply because no one was equipped for a disaster on this scale - also because funds were not readily available to prevent this tragedy.

The Kurdistan Children's Fund is desperately trying to avoid a repeat of such a disaster and urgently needs your support for the Kurdish children in Northern Iraq - we're informed that overseas relief supplies are being targeted to other areas and that thousands of children in Iraqi Kurdistan are now at risk. Please help if you can - click here for more details.

MARCH 2003

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19^th March 2003: ACCELERATED LEARNING - Michael Tipper's latest Feature article, "Exactly what *is* Accelerated Learning?", is now on line - a thought-provoking read! - click here.

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14^th March 2003: STOP PRESS: One of the charities in the Project HappyChild Directory, SENSE, has been offered a copy of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" - signed by the author, JK Rowling - to auction to raise funds for deafblind children and young adults. Auction starts on Monday 17th March for 10 days only - click here for details.

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14^th March 2003: SCHOOLS INTERCHANGE: Our thanks to Chris Nicole, Senior Web Assistant at Kingston Upon Hull City Council Internet Service, for updated link details for schools' resources and websites in Kingston Upon Hull, and to Nigel Boyes, Development Analyst at Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council, for forwarding details of their new website which includes the Stockton TRAIN [Teaching Resources and Information Network] with full listings of schools across the borough.

Links to schools' websites for both authorities can now be found on our Schools England E-L and Schools England M-R pages.

13^th March 2003: SPELLINGS, SOUNDS AND MEANINGS: We're delighted to say there has been significant progress with this area, with over 20,000 words now identified for the Sounds Database. About double what we expected! - and whilst this will make the whole resource very comprehensive, it also means we have a fair amount of work ahead to subdivide the groups (all words have finally been allocated to their basic main groups now).

We've added 114 further pages to the Spellings, Sounds and Meanings area, primarily Index pages for each individual Sound group as well as a comprehensive range of blank template pages to allow parents and teachers to make up their own worksheets for individual children or classes, according to age and ability requirements, for writing practice, dictionary usage, use of words in sentences, wordsearch puzzles and making crossword clues.

We've also added a prototype "translation" page, after a number of requests from countries overseas, and it's planned to make the whole 20,000-word resource available (at 10 words per sheet) for easy translation into any other language. Formatted in a similar way to our free French resource, the worksheets will enable parents and teachers to write in the correct translation in their own language so that the sheets can be used for translation practice both to and from English. The dual advantage is that pronunciation is clarified by the word groupings themselves, because the whole resource will be arranged on the basis of where the stress falls when the word is spoken.

We're also liaising with Mario Becroft in New Zealand (who has kindly offered to do the programming work for this whole resource) with respect to colour-coding words (to indicate common usage, advanced, discontinued, slang or specialist/erudite) to make it easier for relevant words to be extracted to meet the needs of individual children - see the "classifications" page.

We have a lot of work ahead! - but the heavy-duty element is done now, and as soon as the new html templates are prepared to enable programming to go ahead, we'll be able to focus on ordering the remaining words into sub-groups to enable this whole resource to go on line as soon as possible. Please click here for access to all prototype pages as well as blank templates and worksheets already available for poetry writing, mc lyrics, making crosswords, and lateral thinking.

7^th March 2003: GUESTBOOK: Our thanks to Randy Griggs in Portage, MI USA, for his e-mail about our free Maths worksheets, now added to the website Guestbook.

7^th March 2003: We'd also like to thank the International Association of Webmasters and Designers for the Golden Web Award 2003-2004, awarded to the Project HappyChild website "in recognition of creativity, integrity and excellence on the web".

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6^th March 2003: SYNDROMES LINKS: We've just added a new organization to the Syndromes links index page, a Support Group for Pathological Demand Avoidance Syndrome (the symptoms of which are in some ways similar to Autism or Asperger's Syndrome). Detailed diagnostic criteria are provided along with guidelines for educational and support needs - click here for more info.

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1^st March 2003: Well, what a month February has been! We'd expected things to be quiet, not being able to update this page due to working on the new resource for Spellings, Sounds and Meanings, but we received over a third of a million visits over the month as a whole (2.6 million "hits" - see the "about us" page for more info).

We're *still* working on the databases .... so it may be a few more days yet before things start going back to normal. However it looks as though the SSM resource will be somewhat bigger than expected .... more news on that later! In the meantime, our thanks to everyone who's been sending in lists for "Keywords for Learning" - especially to Tony Crabtree, the "Dolphin Man", whose beautiful photos of the underwater world are so popular with visitors.

Tony's just added a "PayPal" facility to his site - you can get graphics for printing stunning A4 size pictures of dolphins, seals and many other sea creatures for only £2.50 each.

More KFL lists are always appreciated; we're hoping to add to this section as soon as the SSM pages are a little further forward. There's a great deal going on here! We'll update this page again as soon as things settle down a little and we're able to catch up with the mass of new items which have come in from visitors over the last four weeks.

FEBRUARY 2003

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18^th February 2003: BRICKS AND MORTAR: Our thanks to Lori for her delightful e-mail about our free-to-print reading system, "Bricks and Mortar, which we've now added to the main index page. E-mails about our free resources are always very much appreciated!

FEBRUARY 2003

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1^st February 2003: Just a reminder that we'll be working on the Sounds Database for the new Spellings, Sounds and Meanings area during the whole of February - the latest Newsletter contains full details of this and other developments on the site, including Keywords For Learning, the massive new 2003 Events Calendar, and the Guestbook appeal from Doctors on Call for Service.

JANUARY 2003

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30^th January 2003: FREE KEY STAGE 1 MATHS RESOURCES: Our thanks to Eleanor who wrote in asking where to find a print-able page with numbers 1-1000. We didn't know of one so have created a page here on the site, along with a square grid of numbers 1-100 along with free worksheets for marking up prime numbers, square numbers, numbers divisible by 2, 3, 4 etc. - see Numbers 1-100 for links to the free worksheets and the 1-1000 page.

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28^th January 2003: NEWSLETTER: Project HappyChild News for January/February 2003 is now on line - click here.

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26^th January 2003: ACCELERATED LEARNING: Michael Tipper's latest Feature Article is now on line, "Learning for those with a Visual Impairment" - click here for the index to Feature Articles. Michael's still working flat out with speaking engagements and presentations to schools, but will be sending through his January article as soon as time allows :)

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18^th January 2003: EVENTS CALENDAR: All scheduled events of which we're aware have now been added to the Calendar, everything imaginable from the 2003 SENSE City Speed Skate to the Grosvenor House Arts & Antique Fair Charity Gala Evening where Elizabeth Hurley (patron of KIDS) is scheduled to be the Guest of Honour. Endless treks and challenges ranging from trekking into The Sahara to the Mongolian Horse Riding Challenge, and a growing number of charity sites will allow you to build a sponsorship page on their site to make fundraising easier for the required sponsorship for various events.

More charities are now offering Corporate Challenges (over a wide range of themes) and there are also many smaller events to attend, or fundraising packs for those who'd like to organise their own events to help raise funds for disadvantaged children - click here for the Events Calendar with links to further info on the huge range of events listed.

In the process of building the Events Calendar there have been a number of significant changes to the Project HappyChild Directory and if you have a cached or printed out version of the Directory, you may wish to update this.

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16^th January 2003: EVENTS CALENDAR: The new Events Calendar for 2003 is quite extraordinary, with a breathtaking range of activities offered by the Charities in the Project HappyChild Directory.

Ranging from dog-sledding in Sweden to a French Alps Motorcycle Challenge, from the Great Women's Run in Manchester (routed through Coronation Street!) to a New York Bridges Walk to a North Pole Trek & Ski Expedition, the sheer breadth of events is quite mind-blowing.

We're still building the page - many more Charities are offering Sponsored Events now, so there are a number of items still to be added - but we're linking in from the main site at this stage simply because of the timescale for runners looking for Golden Bond places in the London Marathon. Some Golden Bond places still look to be available but runners will need to scan down the page for offering Charities and contact each individually.

We're also updating Directory entries with direct links to Events pages, so if you don't locate a Golden Bond place via the Events Calendar itself, it's worth trying the main site links available from Directory listings. Click here for the Events Calendar and here for the Directory index.

The Events Calendar also includes details of the 5th BASPCAN congress being held on 20-23 July 2003 in York, on Child Maltreatment.

15^th January 2003: HARRY POTTER: Bloomsbury have at last announced the publication date for "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" - book 5 in the series of 7 - which is due for release on 21st June 2003.

Click here for details of the new book - a massive 768 pages! - and pre-ordering information. Demand is likely to be heavy .....

We've also added details of the Sotheby auction of JK Rowling's "teaser" card for the book plot, which raised thousands of pounds for Book Aid - along with a link to the Book Aid site in case schools or companies have any books they want to donate for schools in Africa ..... see the JK Rowling page for more information.

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12^th January 2003: KEYWORDS FOR LEARNING: We're delighted to say that we've now added the remainder of the free word search pages to bring the main index up to date - Kings and Queens of England (1) - William I to Mary I; Major River Systems (1); Reptiles (5 and 7); Charles Dickens (1 and 3), Prime Ministers (3) - 1916-2002; Football (14) - Africa and Oceania teams; and the Books and Short Stories of Jane Austen.

New items received recently for the KFL area include whales, dolphins, porpoises, deserts, volcanoes, islands, oceans, ocean currents, lakes, Formula 1 circuits, counties of England and states of America - we'll be adding these as soon as the pagebuilding schedule allows, along with any other lists visitors send in, in the meantime. Click here to access the new word searches just on line, along with category lists for new areas we'd welcome lists for :)

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1^st January 2003: Happy New Year to all our visitors!

Masses going on here as usual, mainly background work for the huge new resources we're hoping to have in place shortly. It may not be possible to update this page for the next few days, but the December Newsletter will bring you up to date with all that's been happening recently.

Meanwhile we've archived news items from January to August 2002 (see table above) so as to reduce the load time on this page which was getting very long! We'll post up details of ongoing developments as soon as we can, also we have the 2003 Events Calendars to prepare - updates from Directory Charities would be appreciated.

NEWSLETTERS - this website has been on line since 1998 - there have been a lot of Newsletters! The archive is here and the very last Newsletter is here.