Are you looking for fun ways to teach your children about Irish culture? Are you raising a family far from Ireland or do you have grandchildren abroad that you’d like to bring a little taste of home to.
Maybe you left Ireland many moons ago, you don’t get home as often as you’d like and you’d love to share facts about your home country with your friends and family in an engaging and entertaining way?
At Happy Clan we’re excited to share the news of our brand new educational card game about our wondrous emerald isle.
We invite you along to follow the journey of how and why “Happy Families – Exploring Ireland” came about.
Card Game Inspired by Ireland
As a County Down native with a love of travel and now living abroad, each trip home turns into an adventure of how much sightseeing we can squeeze in and introduce to our kids before flying back to our Spanish home away from home.
On our return flight from Dublin to Barcelona, suitcases bulging with potato bread and soda farls, we take in as many of the variety of Irish accents as possible and bid farewell to the endless lush green fields and meadows as we think ahead to our next trip home.
We plan the places to visit and the friends and cousins to catch up with over countless cups of tea while our kids play and exchange new words in different languages.
It’s these feelings and many more that I want my kids to grow up knowing, loving and owning, to feel happy sharing my identity and culture as they grow up in a different country.
Preservation of cultural identity
Coming from a musical family background, I was brought up with a strong sense of the importance of treasuring and preserving culture, both our own and those of others.
Equally the idea that you can belong to more than one nationality or identity can grant you the compassion and empathy to see situations from different perspectives.
This is an important value to transmit to my ‘Wee Ones’ especially as they grow up as natives of another country.
Background in Education
A background in English teaching drew out a passion for education and particularly the use of games as a means of passive learning.
Kids have an impressive ability to absorb information, particularly through play, and to say that puzzles, counting or strategy games take up many hours of play time in our house would be quite the understatement.
About the Happy Families Card Game
New project!
In the quest to find a synergy between our love of games, education and homefulness, the idea of the “Happy Families – Exploring Ireland” card game came about.
I wanted to bring it all together in a fun game for the whole family to learn and enjoy Ireland’s natural treasures and traditions using beautiful eye-catching images while testing their many developing skills and awakening a curiosity to want to know more.
The Families
“Happy Families – Exploring Ireland” is based on the traditional card game of the same name and is played in a similar way to the well known game “Go Fish” except it has 7 family sets and 6 cards in each.
The aim of the game is to collect all the cards in each family and then as many families as possible. The rules are easy to grasp yet playing requires good observation and memory skills among others.
The game aims to teach about the rich natural and cultural heritage that Ireland has to offer through its seven ‘family’ groupings: Cities, Landmarks, Food, Musical Instruments, Traditions, Mythology and Symbols.
Sneak peek
We have an incredibly talented illustrator working away, preparing the beautiful cards as I type. Here is a little preview of two of them.
Belfast
As Northern Ireland’s largest and capital city, Belfast is situated at the mouth of the river Lagan. It is ideally located for the shipbuilding industry that once made it famous. Now a cosmopolitan city rich in history, its many museums and colourful murals intrigue locals and foreigners alike.
Find out more about Belfast or even plan a visit, check out www.visitbelfast.com.
Dublin
The capital and largest city of Ireland, it takes its name from the Irish Dubh Linn meaning black pool. Located on the river Liffey it was the most important Viking city in Ireland. Home to The Ha’penny bridge and the Guinness Storehouse, Dublin is best known for its cultural heritage and charming hospitality.
Click here to find out more about the many things to do in and around Dublin www.visitdublin.com
We’re almost there!
As the illustrations get underway and the card game about Ireland comes to life we’ll be sharing more details of the process as well as news of the exciting upcoming launch!
Thanks so much for stopping by, we’d love to see you again.
[…] we started this journey to make a card game that celebrates the beauty and culture of Ireland, we put a lot of passion, creativity, and love […]