Cougar on the Loose

Recently Nate wrote us to say he was missing a card from a deck of Go Fish for Wildlife cards he had ordered. He asked if we could send him a new Cougar card. We sent him a whole new deck along with the Cougar card. Meanwhile he and his 5-year old son, Craig, made their own card....it was too cute for us to keep to ourselves!

Nate wrote:

Hi Maureen, 

Thank you for sending us the replacement Cougar card - and for including an entirely new deck too!!! We really appreciate it and Craig is having fun with the new deck now as well. 

As a thank you, attached is a .pdf comparison of the actual Cougar card and the one we drew together as our rendition of a replacement card. I am no artist obviously but Craig's pretty good for a 5-year old. Enjoy :)

Nate

Craig's cougar art beside the original card

The Beginning

 Ever since my children were little, I’ve been designing games to make learning more fun. Why? Because I hated school. I was bored and didn’t like being tested all the time. It took years for me to realize that I actually liked to learn! (I went on to get a Ph.D. in education.)

One of my favorite educational art games is the very first one I played with my children. When we got to an art museum, our first stop was the museum store. The children got to pick out three postcards and then we went on an art treasure hunt. This simple game transformed their experience. Before we made up art games, my children would quickly get tired and ask, “How much longer ’til we leave?” But the art treasure hunt kept them curious and excited. I’ll never forget the day we were visiting the Louvre. My five-year old disappeared into a crowd in front of the Mona Lisa and let out a yell: “I found it!”

- Wenda O'Reilly

In 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle wrote a great article about our humble beginnings. Read it for yourself by clicking the image below.

And to think, now we've published 29 games and have several new games in the works!