Garden Surprise Puzzle — Six Eggs, Chicks and Bunnies

Garden Surprise Puzzle — three chicks, three bunnies, and six eggs they're hiding under

Six egg-shaped pieces sit in a 22cm round board, each with a wooden knob to lift it by. Underneath are three baby chicks and three bunnies. The chicks, biologically speaking, have every right to be in an egg. The bunnies have none whatsoever — but then rabbits have been in charge of delivering eggs for about two hundred years, so we'll let it go.

🥚 Lift, look, put it back

The knobs are what make this work at twelve months. A knob is the one shape a hand that can't yet pinch can still get hold of, so lifting the eggs out is possible from the day it arrives — and lifting things out is the half of puzzling that comes first. Dropping them back into their cut-outs follows a few months later.

🎨 Then the colours give you a second game

Each animal is painted to match the egg it came out of. So once the lifting is easy there's a harder game waiting: six animals, six shells, and the job of getting everyone home. Putting them in the wrong eggs on purpose is both the best way to make it difficult and the first thing a toddler will do to you.

🐇 Six animals that stand up on their own

The chicks and bunnies aren't just puzzle filling — they're free-standing blocks, so they leave the board and get played with on the rug, lined up on a windowsill, and taken to somebody else's house in a coat pocket. Three of each means pairs, which is what small children reach for as soon as they start inventing stories.

🌳 Wood and paint

Speedy Monkey design their toys in France and make this one from wood with non-toxic, child-safe paints. It carries UKCA and CE marking.

What we like about it

• A reveal a toddler can do themselves — lift the egg, find the chick
• Knobbed pieces, so it works from twelve months rather than two years
• Two games in one: shapes into cut-outs, then colours to their shells
• Three chicks and three bunnies, all free-standing, so they play off the board
• A 22cm round board that stores the whole thing
• Designed in France, wooden, non-toxic paints, UKCA and CE

Specification

• Suitable from: 12 months
• Contents: 22cm round base board, 6 egg-shaped knobbed puzzle pieces, 6 animal blocks — 3 chicks and 3 bunnies
• Board size: 22cm diameter
• Weight: 491g boxed
• Material: wood with non-toxic, child-safe paints
• Designed in: France
• Safety: UKCA and CE
• Care: clean with a damp cloth only, no detergents

❓ Frequently asked questions

Doesn't the surprise only work once?
You'd think so, and it's the obvious worry about a toy with "surprise" in the name. It doesn't work like that in practice: toddlers aren't surprised by novelty so much as delighted by repetition, and knowing the chick is under there is exactly why they lift the egg for the fortieth time. The colour-matching gives the toy somewhere to go once the reveal is familiar.

Can a one-year-old really do it?
They can lift the eggs out straight away — that's what the knobs are for. Putting them back comes later, and matching each animal to its own colour of egg later still. Three stages from one toy, with several months between the first and the last.

Is this an Easter toy?
It isn't sold as one, and there's nothing seasonal printed on it — but eggs, chicks and bunnies in one wooden box is about as close as a toy gets without saying so. It makes a far better Easter gift than chocolate, and it'll still be in use in June.

How many loose pieces?
Twelve — six eggs and six animals — on a board that stays in one piece. A missing bunny leaves an empty egg, which small children notice and mind about rather more than adults expect.

Garden or Dino?
Same board, same mechanism, same price. The Dino Surprise Puzzle has six dinosaurs instead of chicks and bunnies. Garden is the gentler of the two and the better spring gift; Dino is the one that'll still be wanted at four. Pick by what your little one is currently obsessed with.

How do I clean it?
A damp cloth only, and no detergents. Painted wood doesn't take kindly to sitting in water — and at this age the animals will go in the mouth first.

🐰 More bunnies and chicks

• Bunny Activity Triangle — wooden, and the same cast of characters
• Organic Cotton Baby Activity Ring — Pink Rabbit — a rattling bunny on a wooden ring, from birth
• Bunny Baby Comforter and the White Bunny Baby Rattle — for the youngest in the house
• Chicken Coop Set — a wooden coop with a cockerel, a hen and three chicks, from 18 months

🧩 Other first puzzles

• Farm Peg Puzzle — nine pegged farm animals, the same knob-lifting idea on a flat board
• Chunky Wooden Farm Puzzle — seven named farm animals that also stand up
• Chunky Wooden Garden Puzzle — garden creatures with their names printed under the pieces

❤️ From our family to yours

Carefully chosen products for babies, toddlers and parents. Browse more puzzles and the rest of our wooden toys — free UK delivery on orders over £25.