Site Update: 29th February 2008

Update time! There are 60 new resources this week. Full details are given here. My thanks go to everyone who continues to support the site by sending in material, providing feedback, contributing to discussions on the forums and purchasing items from Primary Extra. Find out how you can support the site by clicking this link.

Scheduled Site Downtime

Our secondary web host is upgrading their servers over the next few days. As a result there might be slight disruption to some services.

The Primary Resources forums, the links & photo sections, the Primary Extra website & store and Primary Cartoons are hosted on this webspace. These sites may be unavailable for a fifteen minute period sometime between 11pm on 28th February 2008 and 5am on 29th February 2008. (GMT)

The main Primary Resources site will not be affected.

Greg Arious & Heracles Books Available

In the past I’ve received quite a few requests for printed versions of some of my resources, particularly from overseas readers. A few weeks ago I set up a system where you can order proper printed copies of the cartoons in book form.

The ‘Greg Arious and the Lexicons‘ book is a 24 page paperback, printed in full colour. It’s always been a popular story on the Primary Resources website and this book includes the newer, redrawn Primary Extra version of the tale. It's a great way to introduce synonyms and the use of a thesaurus to primary school students.

The ‘Labours of Heracles and other Greek Myths’ contains the complete story of Heracles together with all the tales from our ‘Perseus and the Gorgon’ myth pack (Perseus, King Midas and the Trojan Horse). This book is 40 pages long, printed as a colour paperback. ‘Heracles’ is our most popular resource so I hope that teachers will find having a printed version of the book very useful.

I’m really pleased with how the printed versions look. Individual books can be ordered direct from the printers (worlwide) or you can buy a book & resources CD bundle from Primary Extra (UK only). You can find order links and prices on the Primary Extra books page.

Primary Extra Store Update

I recently upgraded the software that powers the Primary Extra store. Most of the changes are behind the scenes but should help improve your "shopping experiences". :)

Users of the previous store will need to register for a new account. As an incentive I'm discounting all items in the store by 10% for the next week.

Site Update: 22nd February 2008

Hi everyone. 50 new resources are included in this week's update. You can read full details of the additions here. Thanks to everyone who sent in contributions this time! Find out how you can support the site by clicking this link.

Site Update: 15th February 2008

Hi everyone. I hope that those of you who were off this week had a restful break. 70 new resources have been added to the main web site this time. Full details (together with links) are given here. Many thanks to everyone who sent in material. All contributions are much appreciated.

Have you checked out our Primary Cartoons site yet? it contains new versions of a lot of old Primary Resources favourites including King Arthur & the Enchanted Sword and Greg Arious & the Lexicons.

Inappropriate Advertising

Hi everyone. I've had a couple of people email me today to let me know that they didn't think some of the advertising on the main web site was appropriate.

I always welcome feedback on the advertising we show. Visitors should be aware that the Primary Resources web site is only designed for teachers and other educators to use. Some of the advertising we run is aimed at an adult audience. It is not intended that primary school students should visit the site directly.

However, in this particular instance, I'm not that keen on the advertisement that was being shown either and I've had our advertising agency remove it from the rotation.

Rather than send your students to Primary Resources, many of our "online" activities can be accessed through the Primary Interactive site.

Issues with Flash Resources

A few schools have let me know that they've been experiencing problems accessing some of the Flash resources on the site recently. All of our interactive activities were produced a long time ago now and changes to the way that the latest version of Internet Explorer works with Flash might cause issues for some people.

It is something that I'm aware of but it will take me some time to set up an alternative way to access the relevant resources. At the moment the site links directly to the Flash files. I will need to set up individual pages for each activity in order to get around the current problems.

For the moment, users might find that an alternative browser (such as Firefox) will allow them to access the resources.

More information about the issues would be useful. If you're having problems accessing any of the Flash files then please let me know which operating system you are using together with the exact version number of your browser and the Flash plugin. Please also let me know if you can see the activity on this page.

Site Update: 1st February 2008

Hi everyone. It's time for a new update to the Primary Resources site! Thanks to the generosity of everyone who sent in contributions, I've been able to add 70 new resources to the main web site and 72 new images to the photograph section. Full details (and section links) are given below. Find out how you can support the site by clicking this link.

In an effort to try and juggle work on this site and family commitments I'm trialling a move to fortnightly updates instead of the regular weekly ones. We'll see how the new schedule works out over the next month or so. I'll still be adding items to our weblogs, the cartoon resources site and the photograph section each week. You can keep up-to-date with any changes by following the Primary Resources combined news feed.