Orchard Toys At The Museum Review

Reviewed by Rebecca Wong

I think that jigsaw puzzles are just a good old fashioned escapism from the real world. Forget your electronic devices and games, I love immersing myself into the minutia of great scene or picture. Getting the chance to review this jigsaw puzzle for age 5-10 year olds was a great opportunity to share that escapism with my own children aged 7 and 9. Of course they have done jigsaw puzzles before but its been a while and since then they have probably moved on in their abilities to do bigger more detailed pictures, so the fact that this covers such a wide age range depending on ability, meant that they could do it together.

This jigsaw from Orchard Toys is called At the Museum and is just a wonderful colourful, fun and jam-packed scene within a museum. Every bit of the picture has really interesting or fun events going on which will engage children and leave them looking for more parts of the pictures to point out and talk about or laugh at. From the Mummy coming alive in the Egyptian sections, to the science experiments and the display of the evolution of man; there’s lots to engage your child with, whilst also spending some quality time together.

There are 150 pieces in the puzzle and it measures 88 x 61 cm. A really good size which we decided would be best done on the kitchen floor. There is also a true-to-size poster of the picture included in the box, which the children absolutely loved. So we stuck that onto the wall as a guide to use while we completed the puzzle. Of course we approached the procedure with that classic step-by-step process of: finding the straight edged pieces first as well as the corners, piecing those together and then doing the rest. The children worked really well together and were very focussed on completing it. The floor of the museum is cleverly painted in different colours for each of the sections, so this helped them further identify where the pieces should go when they got stuck.

I absolutely love this jigsaw, everything about it engaged the children and stimulated their minds. Not just by challenging them to complete the puzzle but also with the picture itself, that has representations of science and history, this got the children talking about them and being curious. Also included in the box was a ‘fun fact file’. A small book that has a section for each area of the museum and shares fun facts and information as well as a ‘spot this’ activity at the end. My kids loved this and again it opened up more conversations about space and dinosaurs and human biology.

This is a great rainy day activity that certainly absorbed us for a couple of hours and made the children feel like they had achieved something. I love how versatile it is in terms of not just being a jigsaw puzzle but also giving so much more opportunity for learning.

Rating: It’s a definite 5/5 from me, as a parent who wants to inject as much fun learning into their activities as possible.

RRP and buy link: The At the Museum jigsaw puzzle retails at £16 which I think is a great price for what it offers and the quality of the product. Its one we will certainly do time and again and with each time I can see they will probably spot something new on the picture. It can be purchased at https://www.orchardtoys.com/buy/at-the-museum_600.htm along with some other great educational options for children.