OLLY'S BIG BOOK OF WORDSEARCH PUZZLES - Volume 1 Third Edition

Introduction

Hi! Welcome to the third edition of Volume 1 of what I hope will be a long series of puzzle books written by my students in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The students who wrote these puzzles were a part of my life for 11 years and they are very precious and special to me.

It has always been my dream to give these wonderful children the chance of a happy life where they can believe in themselves and make THEIR dreams come true. Although my students are not poor, they are poor in love and have grown up in situations where their parents don't always have the time to look after them, so they have often been tempted to indulge in antisocial behaviours because of a lack of guidance and tender loving care in their lives.

That is where I come in. For many years I have tried to take care of them by playing games and doing activities in class with them but these are small-scale and now things have developed to a point where I feel it is necessary to finance some bigger activities, so that they can develop their self-esteem not just to the point at which most students of a more positive background are but to bring them, ultimately, to the level where they feel that their futures are limitless and that they have the personal strength and resources to be able to walk through life with confidence, self-belief and able to face life's problems with their self-respect intact and with heads held high.

So to further that aim, I have got my students to create the wordsearches contained in this book, using the English skills they currently have, so that I can edit them into a published book and the book be sold, so that money can be made to finance the activities they need to do at lunchtime and after school that will challenge them to become the best they can be and help them to further their dreams of a better life.

Some of the activities I want to do with them are simple – a Chess Club, basketball practice and other such things. Others are more grand, such as teaching them how to run a coffee shop or small business, or singing, dancing and hip-hop lessons! I hope that the money this book makes will go towards this goal and that our students can have the chance to do the things they've always wanted to do with loving support from their teacher (that's me!) and the staff who will conduct the activities.

This is the third edition of Volume 1. In the original edition, I included pictures of all the wordsearches exactly as they were drawn by the students. I have included only one wordsearch like that in this edition, just so you can see how the students drew them. In the second edition, I improved on the original by having nearly all the wordsearches carefully typed out and mistakes by students minimized. Now, in this edition, I have further refined the quality of the wordsearches, plus added colouring pictures to decorate the pages. You are still welcome to purchase the first two editions but this one is the best quality I have made so far. Even so, I can't guarantee an absolutely professional finished product (remember that they are only children and not professional puzzle-makers, plus English is their second language). You are welcome to draw on the pictures and you may make copies of individual puzzles but not the whole book. Happy puzzling!