Review: Orchard Toys Christmas Surprises

Last Updated on January 13, 2016 by HodgePodgeDays

It’s only been a few days since the small boy turned five, but as soon as the last of his wrapping paper goes in the bin, thoughts turn to Christmas which is only about 6 weeks away now (eek!). To get us in the mood we like to watch DVDs and play games, not least because the tree doesn’t go up until almost the last minute. Over the weekend we all went for a pub lunch, and to entertain the small boy and his cousin I took the Orchard Toys Christmas Surprises game we’d been sent to play.

Aimed at children aged 3-6 years, the grown ups still joined in and enjoyed the game play. The game has enough double sided boards for 2-4 players. There are two different games you can play, the shape game and the colour game. The box contains 4 double sided boards, 24 shaped presents, 24 coloured baubles, 1 shape dice and one colour dice.

The shape game you play with the Father Christmas board, turn all the different shapes over so you can’t see what the presents are, roll the shape dice and pick the corresponding shape, it’s a bit like shape bingo, everyone takes a turn and the first one to fill Santa’s sack with presents wins, then everyone gets to turn over their shapes and see what Santa has brought them.

The colour game is similar and you play with the Christmas tree board. The bauble shapes are colour side up, each player rolls the dice and they collect the corresponding bauble colour, the first one to decorate the tree wins.

The boys loved both games, with one preferring the colour and the other preferring the shape game – lucky there are two games to choose from! This is a nice matching game, where small children can get the hang of standard game conventions such as taking turns and rolling the dice, and importantly, not winning every time.

The Orchard Toys Christmas Surprises game encourages social skills and observations, improves manual dexterity and is linked with early learning goals.

It was certainly a lot of fun, kept us all entertained while we waited for our lunch and sparked several conversations about Christmas. I can see us playing this a lot up until the big day (and probably beyond). Another great game from Orchard Toys!