Over the last few years, we have enjoyed an endless number of Orchard Toys games. I've always found every game to be an educational tool on our learning journey, and have always recommended the games to everyone.
Today, I want to talk a little bit about 'Money match cafe'. 7 year old has been playing this more frequently recently (since his confidence has increased when dealing with money).
How does it work?
The game is very simple to set up. Recommended ages for this game are 5-8, simply because younger children might find it a little bit of a struggle with money calculations. It is so important to work on what children are able to do, or what stage they are at, sometimes pushing too far can be destructive to their confidence. So, general age recommendations are 5-8, but that is entirely up to adults to decide, a 4 year old might take part with ease and I don't think there really is an upper age that wouldn't enjoy a game like this! The least number of player who can take part is 2, and the maximum 4.
There are two separate sets of cards that come with the game, green back ones and red back ones. The green ones are simpler and better to begin with. So, as an example, for £2.10, the green ones will show two £1 coins and a 10p, whereas the red will show 50p, 50p, £1, 5p, 5p (I've made this example up to show the difference between the cards and coins shown on the top side).
Setting up the game is very simple. You set the four tables (are able to stand the tables as shown in the photo), each player has food cards with pricing on, and the green or red (or both cards) are placed in the centre face down. This means the coins side cannot be seen. Each player picks a 'coin' card, checks if they have any food item of that price. If they do, they use the spinner to check which table to serve (tables 1-4), use the tray and serve - the tray aspect is loved by my 7 year old! If you don't have the food item of that price, card is placed back and play moves on.
First one to serve all their food wins!
I love this game for lots of reasons. You'll find on the insert leafiest when buying 'Money match cafe' the brilliant ideas about seating your toys at the tables! It's fab to see games encourage imagination and creativity through play, as it really needs to be explored so much more. I also love the fact that we cover money from maths, again and again, with each time I notice how much more confident my 7 year old feels...building up enough courage to use in real life situations.
Add more step
There are so many other ways you could play this game to increase the maths ability. When the player has the matching food item, you could add another step, ask them, the person purchasing gave £5 note, so how much change should they receive?....and many many other ideas...
We do love this game, and currently it is on sale, so follow the link and take a look...
Money Match cafe
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