Kids•Reviews•Teaching with Games

First Orchard by Haba

First Orchard by Haba
Ages: 2+
Time of Play: 10 minutes

If you were wondering if there are great games to introduce your littlest gamers to that are not only inviting but have rules the kids can actually follow the answer is a resounding YES!

First Orchard by Haba was the very first board game we bought our daughter and it is still going strong five years and three new gamers later.

Part of Haba’s My Very First Games series, First Orchard is a great first step to introducing your younger toddlers to board games. You’ll work together to harvest four types of colorful fruit off the trees in your orchard before the hungry raven reaches the garden gate and eats it all. If you harvest all the fruit in time, everybody wins!

This game really is one of the best out there for toddlers who are still too little to play a majority of the kid games but still want to be playing a game just like everybody else. The rules are very simple. Role the six sided die, if you roll a color, pick the fruit with the matching color and place it in the basket. If you roll the raven, then move the raven up one space on the path towards the fruit. Then pass the die to the next player. A very simple roll and resolve concept that kids are excited to participate in.

There are many opportunities to learn during this game. As you teach the concept of following rules, when a color is rolled you can encourage the child to say the name of the color and then choose the corresponding colored fruit. Along with color matching and recognition you can also practice counting. Each tree has four fruit, as you take one away, take the time to say how many you are taking (“One red apple!”) and maybe even how many are left (“one…two…three red apples are left!”) Even if your child seems a little young for math, this will help with their language development and counting ability. Our son Oliver is two and loves to count, but he still skips numbers here and there (mainly because 100 is so excited to say!) This is a way we can encourage him to associate the name of a number, with a specific quantity of items.

One thing Haba never disappoints on is the quality of their components. Known for their beautiful wooden toys, the components in First Orchard are vibrantly painted, high quality wooden pieces that will hold up to years of toddler play. Ours have been through three children so far and still look just as wonderful as the day we opened the shrink wrap on the game. The pieces are all perfectly sized to fit toddler hands and improve motor skills as kids grab and place the pieces into the (also high quality) cardboard fruit basket. The basket is seriously made of magic cardboard, my boys aren’t always the most gentle gamers and this thing still has its shape.

With components this beautiful, it’s no surprise that kids may become more interested in just playing with the pieces rather than following the rules. And that’s awesome too!! This game is a great option for free play. We usually make it a few rounds before our youngest just wants to feed the raven the fruit or have him fly around to all the trees telling him “No, no, birdie! You can’t eat the apple!” I love any toy that encourages imaginative play; what a double bonus for this game!