Orchard Toys Magic Spelling Game Review

Time for another amazing Orchard Toys review!

I just love educational games and Orchard Toys have been my favourite brand for games for this very reason. 

We were offered a brand new educational game called Magic Spelling.

The game is recommended for children aged 5-7, so Lily is a little young for this game yet. But I was so impressed with the learning experience that comes with it that I just had to review it and let everyone know about it. 

The concept of the game is to race to spell out your word before the timer runs out. But there is a magic element to it where the words are hidden until you use the magic wand to reveal them. 

In the box there is - 

- 4 spell book boards
- 20 spell ingredients cards
- 36 word cards
- 36 letter tiles
- 1 magic wand
- 1 sand timer
- 1 cauldron spinner
- 1 instruction leaflet

As usual the play pieces are all so colourful and child friendly. So inviting for a child to want to come and play with them.

You start to play by giving each player a spell book board. You then need to spread out the letter tiles with the letter side facing down. Shuffle all the word cards and place them bubble side up. Then you need to spread out all the ingredient cards with the pictures facing up and get your wand and timer and spinner ready to play. 

The youngest player then starts by turning over a word card. You will be able to see a picture of something, for example a fish. then under that there would be a black block where the word would be later revealed. If the child is already at a good spelling ability then they can think about how the word fish is spelt. Or this may have to be something that a parent would help with. For Lily as she is younger, we decided to focus on the first letter. 

The timer is then turned over and the race is on to find the letter on the letter cards. But it isn't as simple as that, you must look through the magic wand to make all the letter appear on the cards. As you find each letter you turn it over in front of you. 

If they manage to find all the letters (or in Lily's case, the letter) before the timer runs out then you can shout abracadabra and rub the black strip which will reveal the word to see if you are right. I found that Lily struggled to rub hard enough to reveal the word so I did this part for her. But an older child should manage to do it. If you were right then you get to find an ingredient to put on your spell book board. The letters all go back into the game face down to be used again. 

If you were wrong, or you didn't manage to find all the letters in time, then send your letters straight back to the table face down. 

After playing for some time one player may have managed to fill their spell book with all the ingredients. This is where the spinner now comes into play. Spin the spinner, if it lands on Abracadabra then you are the winner and you can cast the magic spell that is on the bottom of the ingredient card. But if you get the cross bones, then that means you have to return an ingredient and carry on in the game.

As I mentioned above, I decided to simplify the game for Lily's learning level and make it so she was only finding the first letter of each word. This is going to be a great game for her to be able to learn those letters seen as she isn't at the spelling stage yet. Lily doesn't know all her letters but she is starting to learn some and she loved using the magic wand to find them. She got the concept of the game really easily, so an older child would easily be able to understand and enjoy playing this game.

The game is perfect for letter and word recognition, developing word building skills, promoting language and literacy and also encouraging observation.

Overall it is such a fun game that is going to be a great aid when it comes to learning to spell.

This game is £12.75 to buy and can be bought from the Orchard Toys Website. 

Would your child enjoy this game?