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Top Tips for Teaching Your Child from Home Parents across the country have found themselves faced with home-schooling their children and whilst this initially seems like a daunting prospect, there’s actually lots of fun to be had! Here’s our top tips to help make teaching your children at home as stress-free as possible, for you and the kids! Structure Try to follow a normal daily routine to help children to get in the mindset of school and learning.  This could be as simple as encouraging children to get out of bed and have breakfast at the same time and having routine activities such as PE lessons with Joe Wicks.   Variety To keep children interested try to mix up what activities they do. For example some activities outside, they could do some activities by themselves and some with parents/siblings and you could vary whether they use a screen or not. Making a  timetable together ensure they are getting the variety they would at school and will help to get them excited and interested in different activities.   Downtime Don’t feel as though you have to fill every waking...

We are delighted to announce that we have been awarded the UK Supplier of the Year Award at the Toy Industry Awards 2019! The Toy Industry Awards recognise the very best in toy retail, product design and toy supply for the UK and Ireland. They celebrate outstanding success and achievements within the toy industry. The judging panel on the Toy Retail Association side was made up of delegates from the major retailers, such as The Entertainer, Toy Town, Play-room, Selfridges, Toymaster, Argos/Sainsburys and Smyths and they specifically wanted to recognise Orchard Toys.  The judges said “We wanted to recognise the continuing strength of one British company, with the ongoing support it gives to its retail partners. It is a champion of creative, educational and developmental play and a worthy winner.” What a way to start 2020 – we can’t wait to see what’s in store for the rest of the year!

Four fun activity jigsaw puzzles to help teach pre-schoolers key early learning skills such as colour recognition, counting and alphabet skills. Within our varied range of jigsaw puzzles is our collection of activity jigsaws, which are perfect for practising colour and shape recognition, counting and alphabet skills! This collection of puzzles are unique in that there’s no tricking them, only the correct pieces will fit together! This encourages children to self-correct as they attempt to complete them - children won’t even realise they are learning as they piece together these colourful puzzles.   Colour Match Jigsaw Puzzle Colour Match is a funfilled collection of 12 jigsaws that encourage children to learn colours by matching the familiar items on 5-piece jigsaws. Children will learn by looking at the friendly and colourful characters, ranging from pink pigs to purple monsters! Each puzzle includes the written form of the word to encourage letter recognition and spelling skills.  Alphabet Match Jigsaw Puzzle This collection of 26 2-piece puzzles encourages children to match pictures to letters. From a jester juggling jelly to a zebra zipping up a zip, this activity puzzle is a great way...

Maths is ingrained in our everyday life, from buying shopping and following recipes to problem-solving and map reading. Before children come to tackling the more challenging aspects of maths, the first step in their understanding is learning to count and becoming confident with numbers. It’s important to keep maths fun and our counting games for children make learning to count fun for all the family! Catch and Count Counting Caterpillars Giraffes in Scarves Cheeky Monkeys Bus Stop Money Match Café Magic Maths The below games are great for preschool, Reception and Year 1. They make learning early number and counting skills fun!   Catch and Count – 3 years + Designed to promote number recognition and counting, Catch and Count features friendly sea creatures that children will love! Players spin the spinner, count the number of bubbles and collect the matching cards on their fish board.  The winner is the player with the most fish – watch out for the sneaky sharks who could eat them!   Counting Caterpillars – 3-6 years Practise counting and number sequencing in this colourful caterpillar game! Cards feature dots to count as...

In a time of contactless, Apple Pay and online shopping, young children are interacting less and less with tangible money. There are plenty of ways to introduce children to coins and notes, whether this is by introducing pocket money, a visit from the Tooth Fairy or through playing board games. Here’s just five of the benefits that interacting with money can have for children: Understanding monetary value - playing with physical money gives children a greater awareness of the value of money and how different costs are associated with items of different values. Understanding Scenarios – through role play children can also learn more about real life situations involving money. Playing shopping themed games will help them to understand how to ask for items in a shop. Addition and Subtraction Skills – working out how much an item costs or how much change is owed and gathering the correct coins improves a child’s addition and subtraction skills. Saving Skills - studies have shown that children who frequently interact with money in their day to day lives tend to have better saving habits when they’re older. Understanding different currencies – playing...

Whether your little one is just beginning to recognise letters or whether they’re tackling their spellings, our literacy games are the perfect learning companions! From magic to animals, the fun themes with simple and engaging gameplay make spelling practise a funfilled experience. Here’s our top 6 literacy games: Alphabet Flashcards Alphabet Lotto Match and Spell Match and Spell Next Steps Magic Spelling Pass the Word   Alphabet Flashcards This is a great first activity to familiarise young children with letters of the alphabet! The cards are double-sided and feature a colourful illustration on one side and a letter of the alphabet on the other. They are extremely versatile and can be used to learn the letters of the alphabet or to help little learners to begin to learn words!   Alphabet Lotto Once children are familiar with associating letters with pictures Alphabet Lotto is a great next step! Children can match picture to picture, letter to picture, picture to letter or letter to letter as you race to be the first to fill your board! With 4 ways to play Alphabet Lotto can be played time and time again as children’s...

Learning to count doesn’t have to wait until your child starts school, there’s lots of ways to start preparing your child and to make those first steps fun! Counting is a key part of a child’s mathematical understanding and once they master this they can tackle more challenging parts of maths. Here’s some top tips to help you and your little one when they learn to count! Praise and positivity! Maths might have been your least favourite subject at school – but try not to let your little ones know that! Lots of encouragement and praise will make learning to count a positive experience – it’s as easy as 1, 2, 3! Fun Counting doesn’t have to be something that children come to dread, by using fun and familiar objects counting can be taught in an enjoyable way. Why not line up their favourite teddy bears and get them to practise counting from 1-10? Simple, familiar counting songs are also a great way to get children practising to count their numbers. Family Learning Getting the whole family involved is a great way to make counting fun! Cheeky Monkeys will have the whole family laughing as...

We have been working with Norfolk based bereavement charity Nelson’s Journey developing a new resource specifically for the charity. The giant board game is designed to encourage children and young people to talk about their feelings and views regarding bereavement.   The idea was generated by the Nelson’s Journey Youth Panel who felt that it was important to educate schools, staff and young people about how to support bereaved young people. The youth panel worked closely with us throughout the entire process, which began with a brainstorming day at Orchard Toys HQ, followed by presentations to the youth panel and a final celebration day when the board game was launched!   Simon Wright, Chief Executive at Nelson’s Journey said “We’re grateful for the support of Orchard Toys and proud of our young volunteers and staff who have worked hard to create a resource that will encourage those conversations. We believe that this is the only resource of its kind in the UK”.   Ali Brown, Marketing Manager at Orchard Toys says “It has been a pleasure to work with the Nelsons Journey team, on a resource that is very different in topic and style to our...

We are absolutely delighted to announce that we have won Right Start awards for two of our games - Llamas in Pyjamas and Giraffes in Scarves! We can’t wait to find out what level of award they have achieved when it is announced in October!  

Whether it's adding colour to the jungle or outer space or practising ABCs and 123s, the versatility of colouring books has made them a timeless source of fun. They’re great at home or on the move and are the perfect addition to any travel bag. But did you know that whilst children are working on their latest masterpiece, they’re also developing a broad range of skills?   Handwriting. Colouring helps children to develop fine motor skills. These skills will help them to develop the strength to grip a pen, which, in turn, will help when it comes to learning to write. If children are already familiar with holding and using a pen, learning to write will be much less daunting!   Spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination. Picking up a pencil and putting it to paper whilst working within boundaries improves hand–eye co-ordination. Not only could this mean that children get fewer bumps and scrapes, it also prepares them for playing sport or learning to play an instrument when they’re older.   Confidence and self-esteem. Seeing their hard work pay off and feeling a sense of accomplishment...

We’re absolutely thrilled that Orchard Toys has been named as the number one manufacturer of preschool children’s games by a leading global information company! The NPD Group tracks sales from Amazon, John Lewis, The Entertainer and other major toy retailers. In 2018, Orchard Toys games were the most popular preschool games sold, and our puzzles were the second most popular.We're delighted that our games are being enjoyed by so many families. Our aim is to create games, jigsaws and colouring books that are fun, exciting and educational. We are incredibly proud to be recognised as a leading preschool games retailer alongside some of the major manufacturers in the toy industry, and very grateful to all of our loyal customers!  

The satisfaction of putting the final piece of a puzzle into place is timeless. From children embarking on their first puzzles right up to adults working on their latest 5,000 piece project, puzzles are something that all the family can enjoy. But did you know, while children are playing with puzzles, there’s a range of skills that they’re developing – whether they’re aware of it or not!   Playing with puzzles has significant impacts on a child’s physical skills, developing fine motor skills through the coordination of small muscles. Children who have developed fine motor skills tend to find it easier to write, draw and learn to play instruments. Through grasping pieces and matching jigsaw pieces together, children also improve their spatial awareness and hand-eye coordination. This is the ability to coordinate what the eyes see with what the hands do and what the brain pictures, and can be helpful in several situations such as playing sport.   There are also lots of cognitive benefits that playing with puzzles can have for children too. One of those is that it allows children to develop their reasoning...