Game Thursday: My First Games · First Orchard

Today we're going to look at a cooperative game with large, colorful wooden pieces for little ones to introduce them to the first rules: taking turns and following the sequence of play. These materials encourage free play and color recognition, and help expand vocabulary and improve language skills. The goal of the game is to collect pieces together before the evil crow can peck at all the trees and make us lose.

First Fruit Tree is the perfect game to introduce your little ones to board games. The rules are very simple and easy for two-year-olds to understand. What's most appealing about cooperative games is that you don't play against each other, but rather all together against the crow. There are four fruit trees full of fruit that must be picked before the crow reaches the orchard. You can collect the fruit by rolling the dice. Note that the trees must be empty before the crow passes through the fence.

2 to 99 years
1 to 4 players
10 minutes

A first cooperative game designed especially for the little hands of the house's little ones.

Preparations:

Place the 4 trees in the center of the table, and distribute the 4 fruits on each corresponding tree.

Place the path cards in a row, as shown in the image, and the bad-evil crow at the beginning of the path.

Place the box on a side where all players can easily reach it.

How do you play?

Playing in turns, the player who most recently saw a crow goes first. Roll the die and see the result:

• Did you get a color? Great! Take a piece of fruit of the color that came up (red -> red apple, yellow -> pear, green -> green apple, and blue -> plum) and place it in the basket.
• Did the bad-evil crow come out? Uh-oh! The bad-evil crow moves forward one position on the path.
• Did the basket come out? Hooray! You can pick the juiciest piece of fruit in any color you like and place it in the basket.

Now it's the next player's turn. If a tree runs out of fruit and you touch that color, no problem. Just pass the die to the next player and let them try their luck.

How does the game end?

If you were lucky and managed to collect all the fruits before the evil-evil crow reached the last square on the path... you've won the game!!

But if it was the evil-evil crow who managed to get there before you... next time! Shall we have another one?

Did you enjoy this cool game? It's available for purchase here .