Area 6 : News & Views

LATEST SITE NEWS

23rd April 2005: TIME AND SPACE: We've created a somewhat unusual new resource - just one webpage! - please click here for more details.

20th April 2005: FREE FRENCH WORKSHEETS: Our thanks to Mario in NZ for generating the remainder of the French vocabulary worksheets ..... and to Rita in England who has the massive task of checking them all :) We're delighted to say that over 70 new worksheets have now gone on line, on themes including tools and equipment, cars, driving, transport, travel, house, rooms, furniture, house plants, garden plants, weather, holidays and sightseeing - main index here. More to follow! ..... about 100 more worksheets being checked in categories ranging from the body to office equipment.

14th April 2005: Some of you may have had trouble getting through to the website of the Bethany Children's Home in Tamilnadu [who you will recall were looking after earthquake survivors after the tsunami]. We're delighted to say they now have a new website on line here, along with a range of batik pictures, scarves and bedspreads, embroidered greetings cards and sea shell key fobs, which they are selling to support Bethany Home and other local people in need. Support from visitors to Project HappyChild would be appreciated :)

11th April 2005: Our thanks to Vanina + Katherine, England, for offering to check Spanish verbs and vocabulary - see the Translators page.

11th April 2005: Our sincere thanks to Claude Bourne, Larkfield, Kent, for sending us (free!) a brand new copy of MS Works 2000; this will be going out to one of the translators on the Any Language to English project - we've bought several more new copies of MS Works 2000 from Ebay (auction site) so we have enough for immediate use - however we *will* need more in due course and any that visitors can send in will be very welcome :)

8th April 2005: ANY LANGUAGE TO ENGLISH: We've just received an offer for *another* language! Our thanks to Cindy in Finland, who has offered to translate the English verbs and vocabulary into Finnish. We've updated the Language Translations page with the new info, and we'll be adding more details as they come in here.

6th April 2005: As you'll know from the Newsletter, Steve in Southern Switzerland has kindly offered to translate the English worksheets into *Italian* ..... and we're exceedingly pleased to say that Oksana in England has offered to translate both the verbs *and* vocabulary into Russian. So that's English, French, German, Spanish, Italian and Russian so far .... any more offers will be most welcome! See the translations page for the provisional list of possible languages.

On a more practical note, do any of you have an old original copy of MS Works 2000 knocking about? It looks like we're going to need quite a lot of copies of this! for translators to enter up the translated words on the databases we supply. More copies of this software would be *greatly* appreciated - you can post to Project HappyChild and we'll happily credit any receipts on the site :) We've now finished creating the "form entry" for the databases (which will make input and checking *far* easier) so everything is almost "ready to go" now ....

APRIL 2005: Project HappyChild News for 1st April 2005 is now on line.

22nd March 2005: ANY LANGUAGE TO ENGLISH Our deepest thanks to Mario Becroft in New Zealand who has done the programming work to generate the 400+ free vocabulary worksheets for "Any Language to English"; all verb and vocabulary worksheets for the English part of this area are now on line. More good news is that Kate, in England, has offered to translate both the vocabulary and the verbs into Spanish - see the languages and translation page for details of languages in process so far and others we hope to be able to include in due course.

20th March 2005: WALL-TO-WALL ENGLISH We're delighted to say that *all* 4000+ English words are now on line, accessible via the new English "overview" area. We've also created a page for "languages and translators" to help visitors keep track of what's happening where, as different areas progress.

When all the English vocabulary worksheets are on line (hopefully within a couple of weeks from now) you'll be able to see exactly *how* this resource will work. This can be done for *any* language - all it needs is the help of a few people who speak a language-other-than-English, and are fluent in both that language and English itself: all the dual-language pages can easily be generated from completed verbs and vocabulary databases, in the same way as the French-English-French pages already on line here.

Huge project! but it could help a *lot* of kids, especially in countries where English teaching resources are currently hard to find. Let us know if you can help with the translating! and our thanks to Fiona in Germany, who has started work on translating the vocabulary pages into German. The French vocabulary translations are completed! but checking of the remaining pages will take a little while yet, and we'll link in the Wall-to-Wall-French area as soon as the checks are done :)

12th March 2005: ANY LANGUAGE TO ENGLISH Help required! We're looking for people who are fluent in a language other-than-English - fourteen languages are being requested by the KCF school in Iraq, and ALL other languages should be able to be processed (both "translators" and "verifiers/checkers" are needed for the databases, but the "translating" part can be done by anyone who speaks any-other-language fluently). Please do let us know if you can do either translating or checking! See the ANY LANGUAGE TO ENGLISH page for more details.

3rd March 2005: ANY LANGUAGE TO ENGLISH Almost 400 "verbs" conjugation worksheets for this area have now been completed and uploaded; the 400+ vocabulary worksheets are scheduled to go on line over the next 3-4 weeks.

1st March 2005: FRENCH WORKSHEETS We've been pretty busy the last few weeks re-structuring the French area to include the new verbs and vocabulary. All the new verbs are now on line - 400+ verb worksheets now linked in - and over 240 vocabulary worksheets uploaded so far [100+ more, under construction]. All worksheets test both English-to-French and French-to-English.

The reason for the significant re-structuring of this area (those of you who made use of the earlier French pages will know just how much has changed!) is to integrate the French verb conjugations and vocabulary with the ground-breaking new area now under construction, "Any Language to English", making it easier for kids (in *any* part of the world) to learn English. If all goes as planned, the free worksheets for this new area should all go on line during March - so we'll probably hold off sending out the March Newsletter until both the French vocabulary and all the verbs and vocabulary for the English worksheets have been completed.

9th January 2005: 2005 EVENTS CALENDAR The new massive Calendar of events raising money for disadvantaged children is already on line - ranging from the Magic Roundabout premičre, to ski-ing to the North Pole - our thanks to all visitors who support these Charities working so hard to make a difference for kids.

9th January 2005: SPELLINGS, SOUNDS & MEANINGS Thanks go to Mario in New Zealand for all the associated programming work, and for generating new updated worksheets for this whole area - 7800 on line so far, 3200 being the new ones for the EH and IH databases.

5th January 2005: In response to requests and information sent in by a number of visitors, we have created a separate page for emergency resources (essential supplies, etc.) which may be relevant to the current crisis, and also included the bulk of the tsunami-related information shown on 27th-30th December 2004. Please click here for the Emergency Resources page.

Our deepest sympathies go out to all families affected by this Christmas tragedy.

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.