Ciarán (6) is very curious about learning Irish and is fascinated by the Irish words for objects. Our holiday in Clifden this year exposed him to a lot of everyday Irish and tested his parents’ vocabulary to its (smaller than we thought) limit. There’s all these new words that weren’t invented before I did my Leaving Cert too, and with Daddy speaking West of Ireland Irish it might as well be (another) foreign language to Ciarán with his school taught Munster Irish.
With his love of learning I knew he’d be an enthusiastic tester for the Irish language game that Smarty Cat Games had sent us.
The game we received was part of the “Cluichí Gaeilge” set, which is a plastic box of 10 games and retails at €150.
Our extract of the “Cluichí Gaeilge” set was the “Sa bhaile” set, which recommend playing a “Full house” game with 3-7 players. The cards with the rooms of the house on them are well designed in bright colours with clear illustrations and Ciarán was happy to play away with himself doing a matching game to begin with. I had to check out some of the words myself as I don’t think we ever talked about taking a shower in Leaving Cert 🙂
Cathal (4) who’s still in preschool wasn’t at all interested in playing declaring the game “too Irishy”. I couldn’t argue with that, and given that this game required both reading skills and some level of Irish language he was a bit young to join in.
I was impressed with the quality of the games and Ciarán enjoyed playing them. I think this game would be excellent in a classroom setting, but the price for the set would put me off purchasing, since you can’t buy each game in this set separately. There are other games available too including the Chatty Cat ball which sounds like fun.
Disclosure: I wasn’t paid to do this review but I did receive the product mentioned above from Smarty Cat Games to review. My opinions are my own.
