I am very happy to tell you that from now on my family and I will be reviewing games and toys from Orchard Toys. We have always been fans of Orchard Toys and now that we have been made Orchard Toys Official Testers, we are all very excited about it!! You might notice that my sidebar is now showing a special badge that shows this. Yaay!! Hurrah!! 🙂
For those of you that don’t know or haven’t heard of Orchard Toys before, they are a British company that started from a kitchen table over 40 years ago! Although they are recognised now as a leading manufacturer of educational games and puzzles around the world, they still design, produce and pack all of their products.
What I like most about Orchard Toys is that they are designed with the ethos ‘Learning Made Fun’, and they combine bright, innovative design, durability and quality. Also important to them is value for money. When our children play with their products, they are learning about language and literacy, numbers and counting, matching and sorting, sharing and fair play; they are learning to tell the time, recognise colours and spell new words. Importantly though, they will also definitely have FUN!
The lovely people at Orchard Toys sent us a game called Slug in a Jug for us to review. This is a game targeted at children aged 5 to 9 years old. Bella is 5 so she was just in the lower age range to play this game. Obviously because she is still learning to read and write properly there were some parts of the game that we didn’t do exactly as instructed but the whole point was to have fun with the game.
This game can be played in 3 different ways (Slug in a Jug, Rhyming Pairs and Find the Rhyme). I think its good that I can see that Bella can develop her reading, language and grammar with it as she starts to spell out words and make up silly sentences with the cards. We will show how to play the main game as the other ones, we thought, were still a little bit too difficult for Bella. We will keep playing this game with her and I’m sure that in time, she will be able to play the 3 different versions very well.
The object of this game is to collect as many rhyming cards as possible. What you have to do first is spread all the cards face down on the table. Each player chooses a card and places it face upwards in front of them.
You start by turning over one of the cards in the middle and reading it out aloud. If the word rhymes with the card in front of them, the player puts the new card down next to their card and makes a rhyming sentence using the two words. If the words do not rhyme, the player returns the card to the table, face downwards. On their turn, players can exchange the unmatched card they are holding for a card from the table, which counts as a turn. Once players hold a rhyming pair, they can take another card from the middle.
Bella did very well as she understood the game pretty quickly, although she didn’t do the silly/funny sentences when seeing if the cards rhymed. Her reading has developed really well over the last 6 months since turning 5 and she has made the leap from being able to phonetically sound out written words to blending them. We just let her match the cards by reading each of the words to see if they rhymed. She was really good at it and was soon matching pairs and beating Nick. It was pleasing to see her enjoying it so much every time she was lucky to get rhyming cards. Finally, Nick got a match, so it was happy times for him LOL!
The game continues until there are no more cards left on the table. The winner is the player with the most matching pairs at the end. Bella won as she matched the most pairs of cards – well done Bella!! Bless her!
If you like the look of this game, you can buy it from the Orchard Toys website. The price is £7.50. You can also find Orchard Toys on Twitter, and you can also browse around their boards on Pinterest.
We also made a video of playing the game. You can see this below:
Have you heard of Orchard Toys before? Do you have any of their toys or games? Would you consider buying a game like this as a Christmas present?
Disclaimer: I was sent the Slug in a Jug game from Orchard Toys in exchange for an honest review. All the opinions are my own.
Thanks for stopping by,
Love you all ❤️
Franca 💋
Slug in a Jug sounds like a great game for developing children’s literacy – a great game for the classroom 🙂
#triedtested
That sounds and looks like a fab game to help get children learning 🙂 I love games where they learn through play 🙂
Gemma xx
Great game to encourage learning, as well as being fun!
Another lovely game from the wonderful Orchard Toys
These games are really great for kids aren’t they? We have a few of their younger ones for my son and he loves it when we sit down to play them with him 🙂
Que lindo el video!L increíble como Brlla ya lee y puede jugar como grande y la cosita de Sienna deliciosa!!!!!
That looks like a great game, I don’t think I have heard of Orchard Toys but I will definitely be keeping an eye out for age appropriate ones now! xx
Sounds like a great game, looks like Bella had fun- that smile!!
We love Orchard Toys – we have a lovely ladybird adding game from them. Anything that makes learning fun is a hit in our house. They alos make handy presents as they are generally not to expensive.
This looks like such a fantastically fun game. I really need to get this for Ella as they do a lot of rhyming in her class. I think this would be fab for her Christmas Eve box. Xx
oh Franca. This is fabulous. We really do love orchard games! I’ve not played this one before but now i’m tempted to go and buy it! Angela from daysinbed
We love Orchard Toys, we have the Shopping List game and Mini M loves it! This sounds like another hit from them
This game looks super fun! We have a couple of Orchard Toy games already & love them so will definitely be getting this one when Jemima is a bit older #KCACOLS
Oh, I’m so jealous of you being official testers for Orchard Toys! We love their jigsaw puzzles but haven’t tried any games yet.
Slug in a Jug looks like fun!
#KCACOLS
Orchard toys are great! Olivia is too old now (her words) for these games but they are perfect for one of my nieces #KCACOLS
I adore Orchard Toys so much!! We’ve just brought Evie her first puzzles and a little flashcards game (which is a bit big for her, but we use it to teach her words). All my little brothers and sisters had Orchard Toys games and I loved joining in with them when they played. They’re so educational, bright and fun!! This game looks lovely and it sounds like you all had a great time. Thank you for hosting! xx #KCACOLS
That looks so much fun heard so many good think about orchard toys, I’ll have to try something x
Orchard Toys do some really great stuff – this one looks awesome! I love games that manage to be fun *and* educational at the same time 🙂 #KCACOLS
I think my mum has a load of my old Orchard Toys games in the cupboards at home! They’re brilliant! Looks like a really fun game and congratulations on becoming testers for them! Thanks for hosting #KCACOLS !
Thank you Maddy! We are really excited to be testing their games now!! They have a huge variaty of games! 🙂 x
We love orchard toys games and this one looks great! x
Thank you!! It is really fun!! My daughter loves it! 🙂 xx
I really love the looks of this game. The hubby has agreed we can get it for Ella woohoo. And when I mentioned it to Ella’s teacher at parents evening on Saturday she too said it was a fab. Xx #KCACOLS
Yaaaah!! Hurrah!! That is great!! Ella will have lots of fun!!! Thanks for commenting lovely!! 🙂 xx
Looks good and your family look like they enjoyed it. I had the trolley game. #KCACOLS
I am a big fan of Orchard Toys. This game looks great for improving literacy skills and great fun too. I think such a game would make a fab Christmas present. Thanks for sharing #KCACOLS
We love Orchard toys too. We’ve got Old McDonald Lotto which Charley loves playing. Slug in a jug sounds like a great game for learning #KCACOLS
My kids love these kinds of games and I love buying them but they also like to destroy them which makes mommy not want to buy them anymore. They actually got into all of our “big people” games and mixed them up so bad tha I had to throw them away! Kids…gotta love the little shits Thanks so much for hostessing #KCACOLS