Our World Map Colouring Activity Kit is currently available over in our Freebies Club. You can also find other fun and personalisable World Maps here.

Here are 10 ideas for games you can play to help your children travel the world:

1. Secret location: Close your eyes and stick a sticker on the map. Open them and investigate the country or sea where your sticker has landed. Look at pictures on the internet and even go on a pretend journey there! You can find our map with stickers here.

2. Where are your family, neighbours, friends from? Do you have family roots from around the world? Or maybe neighbours or friends who were born in another country? How about finding out about some of these countries and languages? You can plot them on your map. You can find a personalized family map here.

3. Sea creatures: 71% of the earth is covered by water, and our oceans are very important. There are some sea creatures on your Lil’ollo map, but how about finding out about some more? Sharks are very popular in our house!

4. Pretend to be pilots: Build a ‘plane’ (this can be a chair, or a box, you get the idea) and plan your journey round the world. Which countries are you going to visit? What languages do they speak there? Pack your plane with plenty of fuel and food for the journey!

5. Where do the animals live? Where would you find a lion? Or a giraffe? Where do dogs live? Or Kangaroos? Or giant spiders? (I’m dreading on of these being on Marco’s Christmas list!)

6. Food detectives. So much of our food now comes in from overseas, it can be a fun game and helpful conversation to start by looking in the kitchen and finding on the map how far your food has travelled. The same game can be played with clothing

7. Language Explorers: Pick a country and learn how to say ‘hello’ You can use a map of the world to talk about different languages with your children, pick a country and find out how to say hello! Some countries have a number of different official languages, South Africa has 11!

8. Boats, planes and submarines… if you had to travel all the way around the world, how would you do it? Can you draw some of your methods of transport? Do you know where the fuel comes from?

9. 2D – 3D: How about looking at pictures of the earth from space, and also a globe if you have one. We are very lucky to be near to the International Space Centre in the UK, and regularly visit. Marco is starting to make the connection between the flat map, globe, journeying into space and the solar system.

10. What time is it? The time changes when we visit family in Italy, and we have some time zone clocks on our wall. We also recently had friends visit from Australia and this prompted a discussion about time zones. It’s a complicated subject for younger children but, if your kids are interested, one to start conversations about.

We would love to hear about how you get on with these games. Don’t forget to visit the freebies club to download your world map activity kit!

Alex is a designer, writer, entrepreneur, problem solver and mother to two multilingual children. She is passionate about using design to improve people’s lives and has worked on projects around the world. Alex is a champion for languages and creative arts in early education and the creator of Lil’ollo.

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Are you ready for Christmas? My eldest child is coming up to four and he certainly is! He’s bursting full of Christmas wonder and excitement. We are going to put the tree up tomorrow and I’m honestly not sure how he is going to contain himself thereafter! Having children has helped me connect with some of the magic of Christmas again.

They have also taught me to really soak up and cherish these moments as I know they won’t be little forever. I’d love to be able to make, package and share experiences like these but unfortunately that just isn’t their nature, and this also raises an interesting paradox with the spirit of giving at Christmas.

Part of this holiday’s magic is seeing presents under the tree. The only downside of experiences is you can’t really wrap them up and add them to the pile! If you are wrangling with this, I may have a solution for you. I recently came up with the idea of the Adventure Pack and I wanted to share it in case you find it useful too. The Adventure Pack is a beautiful printable folder, covered with a map of the world, that you can personalise at home. It also comes with tickets, complete with space for you to write whatever you would like.

Of course, your adventures could be anything and they needn’t be costly or even involve leaving the house. You could:

• Go den building
• Build an airplane from boxes and go around the world
• Visit the zoo or a museum
• Learn how to do a craft or a sport
• Visit a new place

It could be sharing something you love and spending time with the little people in your life.

This is our Christmas present to you. If you would like an Adventure Pack for free until Christmas, just put your email in the form below and we will send you a link to download the file right away. As with all our printable products, you can print as many as you would like, but please make sure you read our terms and conditions prior to downloading.

Merry Christmas, everyone!
A x

Alex is a designer, writer, entrepreneur, problem solver and mother to two multilingual children. She is passionate about using design to improve people’s lives and has worked on projects around the world. Alex is a champion for languages and creative arts in early education and the creator of Lil’ollo.

The post How to Give the Gift of Experiences to Your Kids This Christmas appeared first on Lil'ollo.

Advent is here and there is A LOT of festive excitement in our house. We are yet to put the tree up so goodness knows how M (almost four) and N (18 months) will contain themselves once it is here! My mum bought us a beautiful kids advent calendar a few weeks ago, and I had been pondering what to put in it. Advent is all about celebration and the lead up to a big greeting. This gave me the idea to create a fun advent calendar where the word ‘hello’ or ‘hi’, in a different language, greets you every day.

For the first nine days, I created nine different speech bubbles saying ‘hello’ or ‘hi’ in the languages we currently have available here at Lil’ollo. These are Spanish, Italian, French, German, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese, Dutch, Polish and English.

I put one speech bubble in the relevant door along with some little treats. The children love opening the doors to find out what is inside. M is really on board with the ‘hello’ part but N is a little bit young. However she still enjoys going to the computer and finding out how the word sounds when I’m unsure. Of course, everyone enjoys the chocolate!

At the end of last week, after those first nine days of advent, I posted a photo with the languages we began with. We had some brilliant suggestions over social media and so I have created the speech bubbles for days 10-18 of advent. Our new languages include Guaraní, Basque, Portuguese, Greek, Luxembourgish,

Romanian, Vietnamese, Irish and Tahitian.

However, we still need six more!

Can you help us? How do you say hello in your language(s)? Do you have a great DIY kids advent calendar idea to share? Please leave a comment below, we would love to hear from you.

Happy Advent!

Alex and Team Lil’ollo x

Alex is a designer, writer, entrepreneur, problem solver and mother to two multilingual children. She is passionate about using design to improve people’s lives and has worked on projects around the world. Alex is a champion for languages and creative arts in early education and the creator of Lil’ollo.

The post How to Explore the World with an Easy DIY Kids Advent Calendar appeared first on Lil'ollo.

Terms and Conditions

• The competition is open internationally.
• The competition ends on 01-12-2017 at 11.59:59 PM GMT.
• There will be two prizes and two winners,
• Prize one is a Writeable World Map and Map Activity Kit RRP £24.
• Prize two is a My World personalised map with 10 arrows of your choice, RRP £60.
• The winners will be selected from all valid entries.
• The winners will be contacted by email and asked to respond within 7 days.
• If a response is not received within 7 days an alternative winner will be selected at random from all remaining valid entries.
• We will dispatch the prize within 5 days of receiving postage details from each winner.
• Email addresses will not be shared with any third parties.
• This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed or administered by, or associated with Facebook or Instagram.

The post Super Children’s World Map Giveaway! appeared first on Lil'ollo.

I am all for gentle learning and a world map is a great visual anchor for an adventure that doesn’t require expensive plane tickets. Maps provide a starting point for conversations about family, friends, neighbours, holidays, where our food comes from, where our clothing is made, where different animals live, where giant spiders live (a favourite of my three-year-old), planes, boats, how parcels get from one side of the world to the other, marine life, fishing, the atmosphere, weather, space travel… You name it; there are thousands of conversations you can have whilst looking at a map of the world.

As talking is so important for early development, I am yet to find a simple poster that can provide as much mileage as a world map. Our family map was one of the first Lil’ollo products I designed as I wanted to be able to tell our children about where our family come from. So I made our very own personalised map and put pictures of our loved ones up all around it. We mark on flight paths when someone is going away, we talk about our friends from all over the world, and the myriad of communities that make up our city. I have also made the Lil’ollo Personalised World Maps available to everyone on our website and I have had the privilege of creating unique maps for families around the world and getting to know all about their family history.

I noticed that the more we talk about our map, the more my eldest child wants to interact with it, to mark on new places with stickers, draw where the aeroplane flies when we go to see his grandparents in Italy, and to go on ‘adventures’. I’ve heard similar stories from other families, so I have designed a new map – one that you can personalise yourselves with stickers, pens and your own key. We have already made a few at home, ranging from maps about our family, through to maps about boats, planes, submarines and rockets. We want this to be your map and for it to tell the stories that you and your children can get lost in.

I’m so excited about sharing our new map with you, and even more excited to tell you we are running a giveaway! Please follow the link here to find out more.

Alex is a designer, writer, entrepreneur, problem solver and mother to two multilingual children. She is passionate about using design to improve people’s lives and has worked on projects around the world. Alex is a champion for languages and creative arts in early education and the creator of Lil’ollo.

The post Why It Is Important to Have a Map of the World at Home appeared first on Lil'ollo.

The term global citizen, or world citizen, has been around for some time. It is based around an understanding that we are all a part of one interconnected world. We need to respect and celebrate our differences, and work together to combat the challenges we face as a planet. Seeing as we’re not escaping to Mars just yet, this outlook sounds infinitely sensible to me. There is a catalogue of serious problems affecting people everywhere, including ingrained inequality, racism, war, famine, obesity, climate change, corruption, economic instability, to name just a few. Decisions made on one side of the world affect people on the other, right down to the purchasing choices we make.

Although world issues are never far from my mind, I hadn’t thought in depth about global citizenship and what is means for our family and for Lil’ollo. This was until a few weeks after my second little bundle was born. In June 2016, 51.9% of Britain voted to leave the EU. When I heard the results, I sat on the step in our kitchen with baby N and cried. The world I was born into looks very different from the world my children are experiencing and, with the rate of change speeding up even further, we can expect yet more flux in the next 30 years. There will be some difficult conversations to have as our children grow. However, our beautiful diversity as a species will always be something to celebrate and cherish. There are so many amazing things to learn and stories to tell.

It is this desire for global understanding and kinship that has driven so much of what Lil’ollo is. Language learning is an interconnected part of helping to nurture global citizens. Alongside the practical benefits of being able to identify and communicate with new communities, a second language can help children adapt to change, become more adept at solving problems and, perhaps most importantly, be more empathetic towards others. It’s not just a love of languages we want to see embraced by the next generation, but a sense of place within and a comprehension of the greater world around them as they grow.

After all, it is often the smaller actions that come together to create great change and I hope the products and ideas we develop at Lil’ollo over the coming years help the next generation learn a little more about each other.

Alex is a designer, writer, entrepreneur, problem solver and mother to two multilingual children. She is passionate about using design to improve people’s lives and has worked on projects around the world. Alex is a champion for languages and creative arts in early education and the creator of Lil’ollo.

The post How Global Citizenship is Inspiring Lil’ollo appeared first on Lil'ollo.