Say G’Day to Bluey Fun! Discover the NEW Bluey range from Orchard Toys! Calling all Bluey fans! Get ready for big laughs, brilliant games, and learning through play – the brand new Bluey range has officially landed, and it’s packed with excitement! We’ve teamed up with everyone’s favourite blue heeler and her loveable family to bring you three brand-new games, bursting with imagination, giggles, and the educational goodness you expect from Orchard Toys! Whether your children are racing grannies, cooking up a storm, or dashing through the shops, there’s something for every Bluey fan (and their grown up’s!) to enjoy. Bluey Grannies Game “Janet, is that you?!” Join Bluey and her friends as they dress up and dive into the hilarious world of grannies! Children aged 3+ will love racing along the board collecting items on their garden path – from slippers to handbags – all to be the first to call Nana and start a flossing party! Yes, a...
We are often asked for recommendations on what Orchard Toys games and jigsaw puzzles we would suggest to parents and teachers to support their child(ren) with a specific special educational need/disability. We’ve teamed up with qualified teacher and former SENDCO, now SEN tutor Georgina Durrant, founder of The SEN Resources Blog to discover how she uses Orchard Toys games to help dyslexic children. In her experience, most people will think of someone with dyslexia as having challenges with reading and writing. A child with dyslexia may struggle to spell words correctly, find phonics tricky or reading more difficult than their peers. However, dyslexia isn’t limited to an impact on literacy. It affects people’s ability to process and remember information, which in turn makes reading, writing and spelling more challenging for them. In Georgina’s opinion, one of the best and easiest ways to support a child with dyslexia is by learning through play, and we certainly have some fantastic games that can assist in supporting a dyslexic child’s literacy skills. Here are some of her favourites and why: Wiggly Words – Georgina feels that Wiggly Words is a great way of giving children time to practise spelling...
The British Toy & Hobby Association unveiled Peter Rabbit™ Fish and Count as one of Toy Fair’s Hero Toys for 2024 at London’s Toy Fair. Carefully selected by an independent panel of retailers, Peter Rabbit™ Fish and Count was chosen as one of 27 highly anticipated hero toys for 2024 (out of over 300 submissions!) Children aged 3+ will get ready for an exciting fishing adventure with Peter Rabbit, Jeremy Fisher, Benjamin and Flopsy Bunny, in this Fish and Count game where players must try to catch as many fish as possible, but watch out for the sneaky stickleback that might steal their catch of cards! Players must spin the spinner, look for a card showing the same number of water beetles as the number the spinner landed on, and turn over to see how many fish they have caught! The player with the most fish in their net at the end of the game will be the winner! But this game isn’t just about catching fish; it’s also an excellent way to practice and enhance counting skills. With its delightful characters and simple gameplay, it’s sure to provide entertainment play after play! RRP £10 ...
Exciting news from Orchard Toys HQ! We're thrilled to introduce some amazing new games and puzzles that promise hours of fun for the whole family! Get ready for a fun-filled dinner time with Fun Food Bingo , a thrilling food-themed bingo game with traditional gameplay that promises endless entertainment! The first person to cover their board and shout “Bingo!” wins! The boards are also designed with dinner plates on the reverse, promoting imaginative play for extended learning and play value. Suitable for children aged 3-6. Doggy Doggy Woof Woof! is a lively, doggy-themed matching and memory game with double-sided boards and two fun ways to play. Keep your eyes peeled for the waggy tail card - when you find it, it's time to stand up and wag your tail! This game is sure to bring smiles and laughter to all players, young and old. Perfect for family fun or as an activity with friends. Get ready to unleash your inner pup and have a tail-wagging good time! Suitable for children aged 2-6. Prepare for an engaging literacy adventure with Buzz Words! This fast-paced game offers four exciting ways to play, from racing against...
Georgina Durrant (qualified teacher and former SENDCO, now SEN tutor and founder of The SEN Resources Blog) recently wrote a post highlighting her recommended resources for parents and teachers supporting children with dyslexia, which you can read here. Due to its popularity, she decided to write a similar blog post but this time focus on numeracy resources that can help children with dyscalculia. Dyscalculia is a specific difficulty with maths understanding that makes maths sums and problem-solving with numbers much more challenging. Every area of maths can be affected by dyscalculia from telling the time, to doing addition calculations. Here are some of Georgina’s favourite Orchard Toys games that she recommends to help support numeracy skill development for children with dyscalculia: Match and Count Match and Count is ideal for young children with dyscalculia who may find counting really difficult. There’s twenty pairs of puzzle pieces and the children have to count the animals and find the number piece that matches. A lovely, fun way of helping children to practise counting and make links between the written number and the number they have counted. To purchase Match and Count, click here. Catch & Count: Georgina...
Georgina Durrant (qualified teacher and former SENDCO, now SEN tutor, and founder of The SEN Resources Blog) is a huge fan of Orchard Toys! She often writes about how our games and puzzles are of excellent quality, colourful, fun for children with different abilities and ages, and fantastic for children with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). In particular, Georgina highlights how our puzzles encourage fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination, and encourage the use of speech and language when playing with friends or family! Here are her top 5 recommendations for this Christmas! Old MacDonald Lotto Old MacDonald Lotto is a farm-themed early learning matching game that is perfect for young children. Players must match all their cards to their playing board, followed by the farmer to win the game! Georgina loves the simplicity of this game, but also the wide range of skills it encourages children to develop whilst playing! The large, sturdy cards can help children practise their fine motor skills; as well as aiding concentration and memory skills by remembering where different cards have been placed, and what cards the child has on their board. The turn-taking element of...
Jigsaws are a common household staple for children and even adults, but they are so much more than a fun activity to pass the time. For children, jigsaws offer a range of cognitive, social, and even emotional benefits that all contribute to early development. In this blog, which has been guest written by Early Years Resources, we will explore how jigsaws help a child’s development. Fine motor skills One of the most obvious ways puzzles support development is by enhancing fine motor skills. To complete a puzzle, children are required to manipulate the pieces by grasping, pinching, and moving them into place. These simple movements are essential for developing small muscles in the hands and fingers which are vital for later learning support such as writing, drawing and even using utensils. Orchard Toys jigsaw puzzles, such as First Farm Friends, are designed with chunky, wipe-clean pieces which are ideal for little hands. Problem-solving skills Secondly, puzzles can be used to great effect in developing problem-solving skills. As children work to complete a jigsaw, it is necessary for them to use critical thinking skills to determine the correct placement of each...
More and more importance is being placed upon times tables practice in schools, which means there’s an even greater need for children to practise their times tables at home. Take a look at some of our top tips for making times tables practice fun for you and your child! 1. Orchard Toys Times Tables Games Maybe we’re biased – but what better way to make learning fun than through playing games?! It can be hard to know how to approach teaching times tables, but our First Times Tables game can be used as a resource to help guide parents through the mechanics of teaching times tables. First Times Tables is a fantastic introduction to 2, 5 and 10 times tables and once children have mastered this, Times Tables Heroes can be used to help practise multiplication from 2 to 12! It’s got two games in one for double the fun and also includes a colourful times tables checker that can be used independently to the game. 2. Online Resources There are a number of free resources available online. Your school may even have set you up with an online programme such as...
With Easter fast approaching, six weeks today to be exact! We thought it was a good opportunity for our new sp’egg’tacular mini-game to ‘hop’ into the spotlight and have its moment to shine! ‘Egg Surprise’ is our new ‘egg-citing’ mini-game, which may be small in size, but is BIG in fun! Whether the Easter bunny is feeling extra generous this year, or if you’re looking for the perfect ‘eggstra-special’ sugar-free Easter gift, this game ticks the boxes and can be enjoyed all year round! Players will collect the adorable spotty bunnies and discover the eggs, in this fun counting game! Spin the carrot spinner and choose a bunny card showing the same number of spots as the number on your spinner. Turn over the card which will show a number of eggs on it – the more eggs the better! The winner is the player with the most eggs at the end of the game. As part of Orchard Toys' mini-games range, Egg Surprise is compact and portable in size making it perfect for travel, at home, or on holiday. The mini-games range also makes the perfect money toys and birthday gifts! ...
From everything you tell us, we know Orchard Toys is a favourite with your children. Maybe some of you played and enjoyed our games yourself as a child? But did you know we’ve been making our best-selling games and puzzles for 50 years – we almost can’t believe it ourselves! We started creating blocks and tracing sets around the kitchen table for a local nursery school, and now we’re the UK’s No.1 manufacturer of preschool games, it’s just incredible. It’s all thanks to you, buying our games, playing them, loving them and coming back for more. From all of us at Orchard Toys to all of you, and your children, a BIG THANK YOU Everyone has their own special favourite, perhaps it's our bestselling Shopping List or Smelly Wellies, Post Box Game or Rainbow Unicorns!! It’s so hard to choose, but we’ll let you into a secret, some of our favourites are Shopping List (of course), The Game of Ladybirds (our oldest game),Crazy Chefs and Giraffes in Scarves. Whatever the game, the puzzle or colouring book, and whether it’s for a little one of 18mths, a pre-schooler, a 5yr old or an...
To celebrate National Colouring Book Day on 2nd August 2021, we are offering 3 for 2* on our fantastic range of colouring books ordered by 6th August 2021 Our range of colouring activity books includes pages of fun for all different age ranges jampacked with stickers that are designed with education in mind, featuring bold illustrations and fun step-by-step activities from dot to dots to word searches. The range includes books to help children learn their first words, ABC’s, 123’s and much more! The colouring books are also the perfect travel companion to keep little ones entertained on the move. Every child will love recognising their favourite Orchard Toys characters in our Things To Do activity book which encourages literacy, numeracy and problem solving. Maybe your child(ren) are dinosaur mad and would love to colour in ROAR-some, friendly dinosaur characters whilst aiding their pronunciation with phonetic spellings or if they’d prefer to practice their literacy by tracing words in our Jungle themed or Farmyard sticker book. Learning is made fun with an Read full article
We’ve launched two new Home Learning Made Fun Activity Books! For every book sold we will be donating £2 to NHS Charities Together as a thank you to our NHS workers for their amazing hard work and dedication during the Coronavirus pandemic. The books are fantastic for supporting home-schooling during lockdown. Each book is jampacked with 24 pages of exciting activities, from colouring sheets to numeracy and literacy activities and more! There’s one for pre-schoolers and another for school children and they’re perfect for keeping little minds engaged without a screen. Our books include activities you can work through together, but also boast the simplicity to encourage children to complete them independently – giving you the chance to make a well-deserved cuppa! The best part? They’re just £3 each including postage. NHS Charities Together is a membership organisation representing, supporting and championing NHS Charities. There are more than 240 NHS charities across the UK and Orchard Toys will be making their donation to a charity that supports NHS Staff as a thank you for their hard work during the Coronavirus Pandemic. We’re looking forward to working together to raise as much money as we can for...
