I'll be upfront about something: I am not a natural toy shopper. My wife, Clara, is the one who researches these things properly — reads the reviews, checks the age suitability, thinks about developmental stages. I am the one who panic-buys things that look fun and then watches them sit untouched in the corner of the living room for three months.
The Orchard Toys Jungle Heads & Tails Game was my purchase. My research. My decision. And for once — for the first time in a long time — I got it completely right.
The Problem: Bea Was Bored and I Was Desperate
Our daughter Beatrice — Bea — turned twenty months old in April. She is, by any objective measure, a force of nature. Curious, energetic, opinionated, and possessed of a concentration span that, until recently, I would have described as approximately eleven seconds.
We'd been through the stacking toys, the shape sorters, the chunky puzzles. She'd mastered them all and moved on. She wanted something new, something with more to it, something that would hold her attention for longer than half a television programme. And I, increasingly aware of how much screen time had crept into our evenings, wanted something that didn't involve a screen at all.
I started looking for a first game — something simple enough for a toddler, engaging enough to hold her interest, and with enough developmental value that I could feel good about the time she spent on it. That's a surprisingly specific brief, and most things I found either skewed too young or too old.
Why I Chose the Orchard Toys Jungle Heads & Tails Game
I found the Orchard Toys Jungle Heads & Tails Game on ALTOE and it immediately felt right. Suitable from 18 months — Bea was 20 months, squarely in the target range. Twenty-four chunky cards, large enough for little hands, wipe-clean because of course they need to be wipe-clean. A jungle theme with friendly animal illustrations that I knew Bea would love.
The two-in-one format was what really sold me. At the simplest level, it's a matching activity — find the head and tail that belong to the same animal. As children grow in confidence, it becomes a proper pairs memory game, developing memory, turn-taking, and early gameplay skills. One game that grows with your child, from toddler activity to first proper game. That kind of longevity felt genuinely valuable.
Orchard Toys is a brand I recognised and trusted — they've been making educational games for children for decades and their reputation for quality and developmental appropriateness is well-earned. I ordered without hesitation.
The First Time We Played
The game arrived on a Thursday. I opened it that evening after dinner, spread the cards face-up on the living room floor, and called Bea over.
She sat down immediately — which, for Bea, is already a good sign. I showed her a lion's head card and asked her to find the lion's tail. She looked at the cards, looked at me, looked back at the cards, and then — with an expression of absolute certainty — picked up the correct tail card and held them together.
"Lion!" she announced, with the satisfaction of someone who has just solved a very important problem.
We played for twenty-five minutes. Twenty-five minutes of sustained, focused, screen-free engagement from a twenty-month-old who I had previously believed incapable of concentrating on anything for more than eleven seconds. Clara came in from the kitchen, saw us on the floor surrounded by jungle cards, and gave me a look that I can only describe as impressed.
I savoured it. These moments don't come often.
Six Weeks On: What's Changed
Bea is now nearly twenty-two months old and the Jungle Heads & Tails game comes out almost every day. Here's what I've noticed:
Her concentration has genuinely improved. The focused attention she brings to the cards — scanning, comparing, deciding — has started to show up in other activities too. She sits with books longer. She persists with puzzles rather than giving up.
Her animal vocabulary has exploded. She can now name every animal in the set, including some I had to look up myself (the tapir was a learning moment for both of us). She points them out in books, on television, at the farm we visited last weekend.
She has started playing the pairs version. We flip the cards face-down now and she turns them over one at a time, remembering where she's seen each animal before. She beats me regularly. I am choosing to find this charming rather than humbling.
And the cards themselves have held up beautifully. Wipe-clean means exactly that — yoghurt, felt-tip, the mysterious sticky substance that appears on all toddler possessions — all of it wipes off cleanly. They're chunky enough that Bea can handle them confidently without bending or tearing them.
The Difference It's Made
I didn't expect a card game to change our evenings. But it has. We have a proper activity now — something we do together, on the floor, without a screen in sight. Bea brings the box to me when she wants to play. She says "cards?" and looks at me with an expectation that I find completely impossible to resist.
There's something about playing a game with your toddler — taking turns, celebrating their matches, watching them think — that feels qualitatively different from sitting next to them while they watch something. It's connection. Real, present, undistracted connection. And the Jungle Heads & Tails game has given us a reliable, repeatable way to have it every evening.
What I Love Most About It
- The two-in-one format: A matching activity for younger toddlers that grows into a proper memory pairs game. One purchase, years of use.
- The chunky wipe-clean cards: Genuinely practical. Toddlers are not gentle. These cards can take it.
- The jungle theme: Bright, friendly, and immediately engaging. Bea was interested from the first card.
- The developmental value: Matching, memory, observation, turn-taking, animal vocabulary. It's doing a lot of quiet, important work.
- The screen-free connection: The thing I didn't know I needed until I had it. A reliable way to play together, properly, every evening.
Who Is This For?
Any parent of a toddler aged 18 months and up who wants a screen-free activity that's genuinely engaging, developmentally rich, and built to last. It's also a brilliant gift — the kind of thing that gets used every day rather than sitting in a cupboard. For grandparents looking for something to do with grandchildren, it's perfect: simple enough to explain in thirty seconds, fun enough to play repeatedly.
Get Yours
If you're looking for your toddler's next favourite thing, the Orchard Toys Jungle Heads & Tails Game is available now at ALTOE. I cannot recommend it highly enough — and neither, in her own way, can Bea.
Explore more in these collections:
- Baby Activity Toys – engaging, developmental toys for curious little minds.
- Baby Toys & Activity Equipment – the full range of toys and play equipment for babies and toddlers.
- Baby & Toddler – everything for your little one's earliest years.
- Latest Products – see what's just arrived at ALTOE.
— Tarquin Bellamy-Rhodes, dad of Bea (nearly 22 months), reformed panic-buyer of toys, and person who is genuinely fine about losing at pairs to a toddler. Based in Bath.
0 comments