This post does not contain any affiliate links, these are products and companies we genuinely love at Lil’ollo HQ. I hope you do too.

Alex xx

12 Christmas Gift Ideas for Bilingual Children and Families

(1) Arabicouples from Daradam

Daradam is a French publishing house that creates beautiful, high quality Arabic educational games. We love the Arabicouples game – this allows children (and their grown-ups) to discover the 22 countries of the Arab League and their different traditional clothing. The goal is to finish your cards quickly – look out for the ‘Scorpion’!

(2) Uncle Goose Language Blocks

Uncle Goose creates gorgeous wooden blocks in 25 different languages – these are perfect for counting, spelling, building and playing all manner of games. Uncle Goose blocks are available in Arabic, Chinese, Cherokee, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Māori, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian and Vietnamese.

(3) A Story Box subscription from One Third Stories

One Third Stories create beautiful and engaging books that start in English, gradually words and sentences in a second language (currently French, Spanish, Italian or German) are introduced throughout the story. One Third Stories books come in story boxes with flashcards, activities and games, and are delivered through your door every month. You can pay month to month, or buy a six or 12 month subscription – perfect for Christmas.

(4) Hai! Hiragana 

Hai! Hiragana works by turning Japanese into creative illustrations of familiar and useful words. It’s a bit like ‘A is for Apple’ but they’ve made all the words Japanese to better introduce you to the language. So instead you get ‘Ri is for Ringo’ (Apple!). The flashcards have lovely illustrations that are all linked to the language character you are learning, making it really easy to remember and lovely to look at!

(5) Membership to the Cultured Home from The Cultured Kid 

The Cultured Home is an amazing language learning programme from The Cultured Kid, available in French, Spanish, Italian, German, English and Mandarin. Join on a monthly basis or an annual membership (a perfect Christmas present) and receive weekly lessons including immersive vocabulary videos, play-based lesson plans, topical vocabulary flashcards, age appropriate activity sheets, workshops, songs, books and more.

(6) I WANT TO BE BILINGUAL! 

I WANT TO BE BILINGUAL Is the latest book by Adam Beck, creator of the much-loved Bilingual Monkeys  website and author of the popular guide Maximise Your Child’s Bilingual Ability. I WANT TO BE BILINGUAL is a unique “picture book for adults” with delightful illustrations by Pavel Goldaev. Narrated by a lively baby, the book emphasises the most important information parents need for realising joyful success on a bilingual or multilingual journey. This is a perfect gift for bilingual families, and although it is a book for grown-ups, the children at Lil’ollo HQ love to read it too!

(7) Lil’ollo Bilingual Flashcards

Lil’ollo Flashcards are available in four different designs (colours, shapes, numbers and colours) and illustrated with our signature animals, all designed to aid language learning. Choose from English with either Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Welsh, Polish and Dutch. If you buy a bundle, you also receive unlimited colouring with our printable animal numbers colouring pack, and our extended games guide with 20 ideas for games to play with your flashcards. The bundle comes in a presentation box, perfect for gifting.

(8) Tim Tim Tom Books

Tim Tim Tom create gorgeous, personalised bilingual books in your choice of any two of the following languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Chinese (Simplified or Traditional). You can also personalise the book with your child’s name and their appearance, with gender, skin type and eye colour, hair colour and hair style.

(9) Babel Babies Sing Languages Together CD

The Babel Babies online stop is full of lovely language learning products (if we do say so ourselves! Lil’ollo is available there too :-D) including some fabulous CDs with songs in German, Arabic, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Norwegian, Russian and some brilliant multilingual ones too. Perfect for singing along at home or in the car.

(10) Booklandia Box

Booklandia source their inclusive, beautiful Spanish and bilingual book collection from publishers in Latin America, Spain and the US. Different book boxes are available for different ages and abilities, and available on one-time, monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly subscriptions. Booklandia also have an extensive section of new-releases in ‘la tienda’ section of the site. If you are buying for a Spanish learner, I challenge you not to find something perfect here!

(11) Mamma Prada T-shirts

I fell in love with Mamma Prada’s ‘Lupo’ T-shirt as soon as I saw it! She has created a great collection of Italian slogan T-shirts and bilingual clothing, available in her Etsy store. All the clothes we buy from Italy are covered in English slogans so I particularly love these!

(12) Personalised world map from Lil’ollo 

If you are a bilingual family, or learning languages at home, I can guarantee that a) you have some family roots in different countries and/ or b) you are interested in learning about the world. I created the Lil’ollo personalised world maps to help my children connect with their diverse family story, and foster an interest in learning about the world from a young age. It comes with coloured stickers and a key to personalise (with any language you like!).

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We live in a world where being multicultural, multilingual, multi-anything is quickly becoming the norm. But I still regularly meet parents who have deep seated concerns about raising their children bilingual. They often feel insecure about their ability to pass on a second language to their kids, and have unanswered questions about bilingualism. Many parents don’t know how to do it, and are concerned that being multilingual is going to negatively impact their child’s development or their sense of identity.

If you’re secretly one of these parents, read on:

Will my child really be able to master more than one language?

The most important thing in raising a bilingual child is getting enough exposure in each language. So if your child’s contact with the second language is limited to a weekly Saturday school lesson, although there will be many benefits, it’s not going to be enough for her to become fluent in that language. But if you consistently speak the language at home, even only for a few hours every day, there is no reason she won’t master two or more languages.

Will my child’s performance in school suffer because he has to juggle more than one language?

It’s another outdated belief that having to juggle more than one language is a strain on the brain and negatively influences the child’s school performance. In the early years, the bilingual child’s vocabulary might be distributed between their two languages (for instance, at five my son didn’t know the names of certain common animals in English but only in his home language). This might give an impression that they’re behind their peers. But don’t worry, it will soon level out. It’s easy enough to pick up additional vocabulary in a language you’re fluent in, but it’s much harder to learn a whole new language later in life. Not to mention that your child will be able to reap the many well-documented developmental benefits of bilingualism, like improved concentration and maths skills.

Can my child learn a second language if I myself am not a confident speaker?

You don’t have to be a native speaker to pass on a second language to your child. In order for a child to learn a second language, they need to have enough exposure to it, but this doesn’t necessarily need to come from you. However, if you are planning on being the main source, you have to be somewhat confident. In any case, if you can carry on a conversation in the language, there is no reason you can’t start carrying on that conversation with your child! Just make sure your child gets additional exposure to that language in other ways, like regular interactions with native speakers and watching cartoons. Many parents I know do exactly that: begin to speak a second language to their child (full time or part time) even if they’re not a native speaker themselves. They’re killing two birds with one stone: practicing speaking the language and getting their kid to speak it too!

What are your questions and concerns about raising bilingual kids? Leave them in the comments and we’ll address them in a future post!

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