Orchard Toys started out around a kitchen table making blocks and stencils for a local nursery school. Now, over 50 years later, we ship to over 50 different countries around the world and are recognised as a leading manufacturer of educational games and puzzles both in the UK and globally.
Orchard Toys is a timeless brand which has been passed down through the generations, with many of our customers who were given Orchard Toys as children now passing them down to their children and grandchildren! We attribute this strong brand loyalty to our distinctive, colourful illustrations, educational benefits and high quality products, which help children learn and play around the world.
All of our games and jigsaws are designed with education in mind, working in conjunction with teachers, nursery professionals and children themselves to ensure they maintain the perfect balance between educational benefits and play value. We focus on a number of key learning skills, from specific goals such as learning different colours or counting, to more general life skills like turn-taking, social skills and hand-eye coordination.
It is incredibly important to us that parents see their child developing and learning with a smile on their face. While they play with our products, children won’t even realise they are learning…about language and literacy, numbers and counting, matching and memory, shapes and colours, sharing and fair play. They can play with pirates, fairies and footballers; they can pop to the shops, fly dragons and race to the moon. They’ll meet greedy gorillas, pigs in pants and crazy chefs. And most importantly …they’ll be having FUN!
All of our games and jigsaw ideas are conceived in-house by our very talented design team. This small but innovative team creates the game play, draws the illustrations and designs the packaging for every single product.
Throughout this process, the team spends a great deal of time testing game ideas with children using prototypes and observing how children naturally react to the games. This helps them to check that the game play works, is educationally beneficial and aimed at the correct age group. Our designers also test for the all-important fun factor – they can tell if the game is a success by the happy, smiling faces! We pay attention to the little details, and won’t stop testing until we get it right.
Award winning products
Having built a strong reputation in our sector, we are renowned for our award-winning range which combines quality with a unique illustrative style. Some of our prestigious awards include Mother & Baby Gold for Shopping List, Toy Fair Best New Toy for Where Do I Live? and Made For Mums Gold for Giant Railway Jigsaw. These are prestigious awards which go through rigorous testing processes by early years professionals, parents and children themselves to get the seal of approval!
Design & attention to detail
Our educational games and jigsaws are loved by both parents and children. One of the most popular features in our games and jigsaws are our detailed illustrations and colourful characters, which appeal directly to children and help them to enjoy learning. All of our illustrations are hand drawn by our talented design team with attention to detail, added value and discussion points cleverly embedded into the design. This means that when your child is playing a game or piecing together a jigsaw, they can see things they have never seen before and learn about the world…from astronauts in space, to prehistoric dinosaurs, to animal habitats!
Quality
We design and make all our games and jigsaws with children in mind. All of the cards and play pieces are sturdy and wipe-clean, meaning they will stand the test of time against constant playing, wear and tear and messy hands! It is this winning combination of educational play value and physical durability that makes our products so long lasting, providing children with games they’ll want to play time and time again…even once they’ve grown up!
Educational Toys Benefits
Orchard Toys understands the importance of these skills and has created games and puzzles to encourage communication, interaction and discussion; which all help develop language skills and confidence.
Orchard Toys provide a range of products which help with letter and word recognition. Children learn from an early age that shapes represent meaning and this is a key skill for a child to learn when developing literacy.
In order to develop these skills children need lots of practice and the opportunity to use them in a wide variety of situations. Orchard Toys offer a wide variety of number based games and puzzles which help develop and reinforce these essential numerical stepping stones. These vary from number recognition and first counting skills to adding, subtracting and multiplying numbers.
Understanding colour is a tool for learning many skills in all curriculum areas, from maths and science to language and reading. For example, when your child learns to tell the differences and similarities between colours, they are using the same skills they need to recognise the differences between letters and numerals.
Our games introduce ways of organising and categorising colours as a means to match and sort.
The first step in understanding letters is the ability to be able to distinguish between shapes. Playing our targeted games will provide the foundation for children’s early mathematical and literacy development.
Memory is the ability to store and recall information and experiences. Developing a good memory ensures that a child can retain information they have been given in order to apply it to other areas of their life.
By playing Orchard Toys matching and memory games, children learn to recognise similarities and differences, sort by characteristics, recall sequences and remember instructions and objects.
