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Orchard Toys Board Game Reviews
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Orchard Piggy in the Middle
by broxi3781 This is one of three new games I bought from Orchard Toys this week. To be perfectly honest, I bought this one for the pig. My youngest has always wanted those plastic pigs with names on them, but we've never been able to find one with his name, and looking at this, I knew he'd love the little piggy bank that comes with this game. It ... could be used as regular piggy bank if you wished, although it is a bit small. It is a lovely see through red plastic with a very large stopper which makes emptying it very easy. But of course the piggy bank is just a prop, something to make the game a little bit more exciting, and having to pay out money a bit more fun as at least you get to drop it through the slot - which for some reason my children do find entertaining. Like most Orchard Toys games, the game board is made of puzzle pieces and must be assembled before playing. I do like this feature, it means the game fits in a much smaller box than it would with a folding game board, and I believe this is sturdier as well. Plus, for very young children, building the game board is part of the fun, and puzzles are excellent for child development. Once the game is assembled each player chooses a card board pig, and a marker of the same colour. Each player starts the game with £2. The object of the game is to reach £5 and race to the finish before you end up spending on something and have to start saving all over again. There is only one dice, so children only need to be able to count 6. If they can not count this high, board games are a brilliant way to teach basic counting skills. With a bit of help they should be counting their own spaces in no time. The children roll the dice and move the allotted spaces, there is some slight choice of where to move, but not much. This is a game of luck rather than skill. If they land on "?" space they take a card and spin the spinner to see how much they can save or spend. There are significantly more save cards than spend, so there is little chance of anyone going in the hole, and this does reduce frustration with younger players as well. There are also two jackpot piggy cards, entitling the holder to the full contents of the piggy bank. This game comes with UK coins from .10 pence to £1. There are no 1, 2, or 5 pence coins, which I felt was a shame but I suppose it does keep the game simple. Each child has 5 £1 spaces on their card to fill up, so by using the different coins are able to see different ways of making £1. The child will learn simple addition and subtraction skills as they spend or save money, and make change as needed. This game is recommended for ages 5 -10. I do think age 10 is really stretching it, and I can't imagine a 10 year old really wanting to play this game. My 8 year old was happy enough to play, as we take turns choosing games, but I don't think he would choose to play this, and he really isn't learning anything by it as he is quite familiar with his coins by now. My youngest is 4 1/2, and at this age he does still need adult help, but i feel he is just at the right age to buy this game. He can start learning his coins, and will learn more maths as he goes along. He enjoyed the game as well, but once was enough and he was ready to move onto the next game. He has had a lot of fun just playing with the coins and the piggy bank though, and the coins alone are very educational as well. I have wavered a bit as to what rate to give this. On the one hand, the coins and the piggy alone were worth close to the purchase price of £10.88. It is fun for awhile, and a nice addition to our family games collection. On the other hand, the game itself does not hold the children's attention for long and I feel the age rating is far too wide. I would recommend this for ages 4-6. My oldest says this should have 4 stars, which I feel is quite fair. The youngest says 5, but only because he loves the pig - which has already been liberated from teh game box for play with real money. I do feel this is helpful for children to learn coins, and will be wonderful when my youngest is learning more advanced addition and subtraction - so for educational value alone I would give this 5 stars. If considering this item for a classroom, or for home education purposes, I would give a 5 star rating, but for the average family, I feel 4 stars would be more fair. I do still recommend it. It is very well made and a nice game that will be educational for a couple of years, but I feel it will be outgrown quickly as well. On the plus side, the piggy bank may still be used years after the game itself is outgrown. Read the complete review |
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Orchard Toys Shopping List
by milliesmum123 My daughter was slow at beginning to talk and we looked around for all kinds of imaginative ways to help her to speak. We bought this shopping list game as we thought it looked fun and hoped it would improve her language. My daughter is now 5 and still loves playing with this game so it has more than paid it's way! I think it cost us ... about £8 about 3 years ago so it was good value for money. === Orchard toys === I hadn't really noticed Orchard Toys before but since we bought this we now have lots of these games in our play room! The toys are lovely, imaginative board games which help children to learn about turn taking and other valuable skills. We have a few including a lovely cupcake one, this shopping list one and a bingo type game. They are all really very good quality and seem to engage my daughter and her friends so we find it hard to fault them. === Shopping list === The idea of this game is to complete your shopping list. Within the box you get cardboard supermarket trolleys with spaces for 8 items, there are four of these and also four shopping lists. These lists have words of items on as well as pictures. Each of these items are the same as the little products which come on pieces of card which fit the spaces on the supermarket trolley. These are about the size of a large stamp so they are quite small for young children. The idea of the game is to give each person (up to 4 players) a shopping list and a trolley. All of the items are turned upside down on the table and people take it in turns to select an item. If it is on their shopping list they then add it to the trolley. The person to fill their trolley up is the winner. It is a very simple game which is very easy for children to understand. === Enjoyment. === My daughter enjoys playing this game, she finds it really exciting seeing what will be the next card t obe turned over and will she have it on her list?! She loves it and it always creates lots of laughter when she finds a item on her list! She likes trying to guess which items will be turned round next. Each game lasts about ten minutes which I think is a good length, any longer then children can get bored and lose concentration. This is a very simple game with easy instructions so children will enjoy it, it's important to have easy instructions for children of a preschool age so they can follow it and also not get bored when you're trying to explain it to them. When my daughter has friends round to play they enjoy playing it too. === Education === This game is very educational. My daughter didn't speak very much but we used these supermarket items to help her to learn words and also recognise them. She would learn to recognise items which was really important so we could see she could understand what the words were even if she couldn't say them. She has learnt to recognise the items, recognise letters in the words on the list and also this has helped when we go shopping in real life too! She has learnt the basic skills of game playing so knows about how to take turns and how she can't always win but it's okay. Her dexterity skills have improved too as she's learnt to place the pieces in the trolley carefully. === Conclusion === This is a brilliant game which is so simple and straight forward yet entertaining and educational too. My daughter loves playing with this as do her friends when they come round. It is very good quality, made from strong card and the pictures are nice and bright so attractive to children. We have had this for several years and it still remains in very good condition. We highly recommend it. Read the complete review |
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Orchard Toys Old Macdonal Lotto
by emmad5689 ==The Purchase== My youngest daughter always gets a little jealous when I am playing a game with my eldest daughter so I decided to have a look for a game which would be suitable for playing with her as part of her Christmas present. We were first introduced to Orchard Games when my eldest daughter brought one home ... from school as part of her Chatty Matters activity bag so I knew how good they were and so searched Orchard Games on Amazon to see what would be suitable. The really good things about Amazon is you get a lot of information about the games and so I was happy to find that this game seemed suitable for my daughter and was the correct age range being for ages 2-6 years. I paid just under £7 with free delivery however I have checked the current price and it is currently selling at £5.98 which is fantastic value in my opinion as it is such good fun and educational to boot. ==The Box== The game comes packaged in a cardboard box which is a decent thickness and nice and strong to keep all the pieces in. The box was wrapped in cellophane when it first arrived which means of course you know you are the first one to have played with it and that all the pieces will be inside the box. The box is very brightly coloured and has the name of the game across the top in bright white lettering and then "...with a moo moo here, and a moo moo there....." written underneath it. The picture on the front of the box is of a farmer surrounded by animals and items from on the farm such as the bee hive, a Pig, a tractor and a Cow and then in the bottom corner the box tells you the game is for 2-4 players and for ages 2-6. On the reverse of the box you have a picture of all the pieces that you will find inside the box along with a list of the contents which are 4 farm boards, 24 farm cards, 4 farmer cards and an instruction leaflet. There is an educational guide on the box which tells you educationally what the game promotes which is, Reinforces object matching skills, Encourages observation and memory skills, Develops social communication, Links with the Early Learning Goals and National Curriculum Literacy Key Stage 1. When I read this on the back of the box I was pleased with how much this game could promote especially when it is suitable for children so young. ==The Pieces== Inside the box there are 4 playing boards, each playing board is about 8 inches x 10 inches and is made of hard board, the top half of the board has a picture on it of a scene on a farm and then on the bottom half there is 6 small squares with different animal or farm item in them and then a rectangle which has a picture of the farmer in it. The farmer and the 6 objects in the squares are all within the picture above them for example one of the boards has a farmer in a bee keepers outfit getting the honey out of the beehive with a Goose and a sleeping Cat at his feet and a Sheep and a Dog in a field behind him surrounded by a fence and then a little green tractor travelling up the hill in the background. The items you have to find on your board for this one is a Sheep, 2 Bumble Bees, a Dog, a sleeping Cat, a Goose, the Green Tractor and finally the Farmer in the Bee keeping outfit. Each of the boards works with the same idea and the others have scenes of a farmer mucking out a pigsty, a farmer using a horse to plough a field and finally a farmer milking a cow. I really like the boards and the way they are laid out and to begin with I just used the boards for Emily to find the animals as my Mam after playing the game with my eldest daughter on Christmas day had told me she didn't think that Emily would grasp it. The pieces that go with the boards all have a white background and then have the picture of the item in the middle, the pieces all have rounded edges to make them young children friendly which of course is brilliant. Within the box not only was there an instruction leaflet which was very easy to follow but there was also a leaflet showing what Orchard games are available and also what age range each one of them is meant for which I have found very useful as it has pointed out a couple more games which may be suitable for both my daughters to play with. ==Playing the Game== The game is very easy to play which is exactly what I expected with it being suitable for ages 2 and up, you simply take the 4 farmer cards and the 24 farm item cards and place them face down on a flat surface, you place the 4 farmer cards separately. Each player picks a farm board and then you take it in turns to pick a card from the farmer items section and see if it matches an item on your board, you take it in turns to pick the cards until one of you manages to fill your 6 squares up on your board, once the 6 items are found then you just have to find your farmer and the one who does it first is the winner. The first time we played the game following from my Mam saying she didn't think that Emily would be able to play the game herself, myself and Emily played as a team against her sister Sophie. The game was very easy to set up although Emily did keep trying to pinch the pieces but after she was told she had to wait she was fine. We began playing and Emily held the board for us and when we found a piece that matched she was able to put it onto the correct space on the board, it was of no surprise to me that she could match them up as she is very good at the wooden style pull out jigsaws. We continued playing and if Sophie picked up a card which was on our board I would point out to Emily which item we wanted and then once Sophie replaced the piece asked her to get the item and she was able to do so with ease. We played the game a couple of times that evening and we made a big fuss and cheered whenever each of us won which got Emily really excited. We also used the pieces to ask her what noises the animals make and she loved making the noises and to make her more familiar with some pieces we changed the names of them a little such as moo cow for the cow and green chug chug for the green tractor which seemed to help her. The second time we played the game I decided that after her performance the previous night that we would give the game a go with her playing with her own game board. We found that Emily can grasp the game really well and she really loves playing, she doesn't like when someone turns her card over and she has to wait for someone else to have their turn before she can claim it but I just sit next to her and just remind her to wait her turn and she remembers again which is great in my opinion considering she is 2 years old and not only that but she is nearer 2 than 3. ==Opinions== I love this game and so do both my girls, Sophie is 5 years old and she still enjoys playing the game more for the fact of playing a game that Emily can manage than it being a favourite game of hers as it is too easy for her although saying that she seems to keep picking the same cards up and forgets that she already knows what the card is. Emily gets really excited about the game and when we finish a game she shouts "again, again" she gets really upset when I say it's time to put the game away. I love the fact that Emily is learning so much from this game and not only the facts of matching, taking turns and memory skills but also animal names and sounds which are obviously a basic for any young child to be learning. The game is fantastic quality and the pieces are all made of thick board and we have played with the game many times through the last few weeks and there is no damage to any of them. The pictures on the boards and pieces are all bold and brightly coloured without having too much detail for your child to concentrate on. The one suggestion I would have for Orchard Games is that I would have a couple of extra blank playing pieces in the box so that if a piece accidentally got lost you could at least replace it with a blank one rather than not being able to use the farm board that needs the item. I cannot praise this game enough, I get bugged nearly every day to play the game and myself and Emily have played just the 2 of us when Sophie is at school and she is able to play one on one really well, the next step for us is for the girls Dad to join in so that she can learn to wait even longer between her goes and help her learn some patience. I have found that after a few rounds of this game I am sometimes left a little hoarse as I am constantly telling the girls whose go it is and reminding Emily to wait her turn as well as making animal noises and cheering. We all give this game 5 stars, I was surprised to find Emily can manage to play the game and my Mam was even more surprised but I am glad she can as the game gives her so much enjoyment and it is really lovely to see. I am now looking forward to buying some moe Orchard Games suitable for Emily and seeing how she progresses. Read the complete review |
Orchard Toys Board Game |
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3 reviews Orchard Toys / Board Game / 4+ years. |
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2 reviews Orchard Toys / Board Game |
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8 reviews Manufacturer: Orchard Toys / Board Game / Players: 2-4 / Age: 5+ |
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1 review Board Game / Manufacturer: Orchard Toys |
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4 reviews Board Game / Manufacturer: Orchard Toys |
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7 reviews Board Game / Manufacturer: Orchard Toys |
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3 reviews Manufacturer: Orchard / Board Game / Age: 5 years+ / For: 2 - 4 players |
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5 reviews Manufacturer: Orchard Toys / Board Game / Age: 4 years+ |
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3 reviews Orchard Toys / Childrens board game - Join the chefs in the crazy kitchen and collect everything they need to make a meal. Then grab your plate and wait for your dish to cook! Will you be the first to serve up a tasty treat? |
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1 review Brand: Orchard Toys / Board Game / For 2 to 4 players / Age: 5 Years+ - A unique way to make learning addition and subtraction exciting! Collect weird and wacky ingredients to fill the wizards' and witches' bubbling cauldrons as you solve the sums. Check the answers by rubbing the heat sensitive 'ghost... |
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