Find your happy place

I have two children who use laptops, tablets, and smart phones to access the internet. Like many other children their ages, they play games, look up facts, and download pictures and craft activities. And, like any other parent of young children, I want them to access websites that are safe as well as fun.

Happyland.com.au is a website they enjoy. They can create their own characters, go on adventures, solve mysteries, read books, and play games. After creating their own username and password, they are safe to enjoy everything the site offers.

But Happyland is not just any children’s website – it is a ministry to kids. Along the journey, visitors to the site hear who God is and how he loves them, all in a fun context.

Happyland.com.au has many other activities for children in middle primary school and younger to enjoy. These include:

• An iPhone and iPad app called Larry the Lamb
• A Happyland stories DVD that has five short videos with matching
• colouring-in pages
• Show bags for children to keep or to give away as gifts
• Activity sheets and colouring-in pages to print

There are also seasonal extras. In the lead-up to Christmas, the site features three types of Christmas cards to order and write in to give to family and friends; an online Advent calendar to open a new star every day revealing an activity, video or story; and the Little Shepherd DVD that shares the Christmas story through the eyes of a shepherd boy. For Easter there is a special calendar with activities and videos to uncover.

Churches and schools are using the Happyland game and resources to reach out to children with the good news of Jesus Christ. School teachers and children’s ministry leaders tell us they enjoy using Happyland.com.au

What people say about visiting Happyland

‘My grandsons aged 10 and five have grown up with Happyland. It is a wonderful program and I recommend it to others.’

‘I am enjoying the Happyland Advent calendar and printing out the cut-outs.’

‘Wonderful fun internet games for children aged two to eight.’

Create an app for that

To reach more children who are using today’s technology devices, we would like to create an outreach app for smartphones and tablets based on the Happyland game.

If you can create apps or would like to support this project, please contact Lutheran Media on 08 8267 7314 or luthmedia@lca.org.au

Pastor Richard Fox is Director of Lutheran Media

This feature story comes from The Lutheran September 2016. Visit the website to find out more about The Lutheran or to subscribe.