Globe Trotters Box – Italy (Kids’ Activity Box): Review

Globe Trotters Box is an activity box for children available in India on a subscription basis. It provides interesting learning activities for children aged 4 to 12 years on the theme, ‘countries of the world’. Each box contains starter materials aimed at learning the geography, art and culture of a specific country. Children make use of the box contents to create, solve or learn through an activity such that while working on the activity they also get to learn facts about the country.

Watch our video below for unboxing and demo of the Globe Trotters Box – Italy.

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The first country our 4-year-old Vihaan and Mommy got to explore from Globe Trotters Box was Italy. The box had both of us hooked on some new activities in the last few days. Here’s our detailed review and experience of the Globe Trotters Italy Box.

Browse for Globe Trotters Box from Amazon

What’s in the Globe Trotters Italy Box?

Here’s all that we got!

Note that the contents differ with the two age groups: Little explorers (ages 4-6) and Young explorers (ages 6-12). The contents and activities reviewed in this post are from the Little explorers box.

Find the images of the content (in the picture above) against its respective number below.

• #1 A Large Illustrated World Map: This colourful world map, made of paper, measures 69cm x 49cm. On the map, each continent appears in one distinct colour. Within the continents, popular monuments and iconic identity of a few places are marked; for instance, Taj Mahal for India and football for Brazil.
• A World Map Key: This is a card which serves as a key to learn the names of the iconics marked on the map by matching their respective images.
• #2 Italian Pizza Play Set: The pack includes cut-outs of pizza ingredients (made of felt paper) like the pizza base, cheese, onions, tomatoes, capsicum etc. along with a cute 2-paged booklet.
• #3 Italian Ice cream Bookmark Making Kit: The pack contains coloured ice cream sticks, felt paper cut-outs, small cut pieces (made of foam), fevicol and a  2-paged booklet.
• #4 Italian Mosaic Photo Frame Making Kit: The pack has a cardboard frame, multi-coloured mosaic pieces of foam, fevicol, glitter pen and a  2-paged booklet.
• #5 Italy Activity Sheets: The pack has a bunch of activity sheets for colouring, puzzles and word games along with a sketch pen packet.
• #6 Pasta Play Set: A cardboard box that acts as a souvenir has inside a few play pasta toys (made of cloth) of different pasta shapes. Cards with names and images of each of the pasta shapes are also included.
• #7 A Play Passport
• #8 An Envelope with post cards and stickers of Italy flag and the Colosseum
• #9 A welcome card from Globe Trotters Box

 

The World Map and Key

We used to have a regular map up on Vihaan’s room wall earlier. His favourite activity with the map used to be asking his dad to read out the name of the country he points to, on the map. So, as soon as we opened up this big map, he got into the asking mode 🙂 He is familiar with the names of a few popular buildings around the world like the Eiffel Tower, Leaning Tower and Burj Kalifa. However, this was the first time, he could relate the structures to their geographical location.

This particular map is a great way to introduce continents and countries to little children. It can help them to gain a visual perspective of where monuments belong to and also kick start their topography sense.

The world map key has a list of all the images with their names of the icons illustrated on the map. For instance, in the picture above, the map reveals the location of Saint Basil’s Cathedral which can be matched with the same image on the key. The map-key can be utilized in various activities for children like as a memory game, as a learning tool and to develop match-making skill. In the video, you can see Vihaan identifying the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

 

Pizza Play Set

The pizza play set was the determining reason for us to choose the Italy box 😆 Vihaan is fond of toy baking and this kit was of good interest to him. According to the instructions, kids are to arrange the different ingredients to make a pizza and stick them all together with glue. However, since we love making and baking the pizza again and again, we skipped the pasting part. The video captures Vihaan learning the names of the Pizza ingredients as he arranges all the pieces together.

For children who enjoy pretend play cooking and baking, this can be an entertaining activity. What highlights this creation by Globe Trotters Box is the material the pieces are made of. Unlike paper or cardboard, the felt sheet wouldn’t get torn or bent. Also, it’s light weight and eco-friendly unlike plastic and wooden pizza toy sets. What one might needs to take a note is that the pieces can be pushed away with exposure to high fan speed and most importantly, if planning to redo and replay the pizza making, the individual pieces need to be carefully saved, as small pieces can easily get missed.

 

Gelato Bookmarks Making Kit

(Gelato means ice cream in Italian)

I assumed it would be the pizza set that would amuse Vihaan. However, the best of the entire kit that he was excited making about was this one. This was Vihaan’s first craft work without our help and guidance. Having observed mommy making craft works, pasting something at the right place using fevicol had looked an adult’s job to him. So, at the end of making this, he exclaimed that he has become big enough to do pasting on his own 🙂

This is a simple craft work which children can do on their own. Children will have to put the ice cream sticks and the pieces together using fevicol. The felt pieces were of right size and flexibility for handling by kids of four years. The video includes the making of all the five given ice cream sticks.

 

Mosaic Photo Frame Making Kit

The photo frame making is another craft work, as simple as the previous one. On a cardboard frame, colourful felt pieces need to be pasted in a mosaic pattern. The mosaic pieces are not of equal size which can help kids to learn spatial arrangement. However, the pieces were quite small for Vihaan to handle. It did not interest him after a few pieces of pasting though I enjoyed doing the rest of it. Nevertheless, it makes a beautiful decor. Here is the completed frame with a couple of Vihaan’s pictures on it.

 

Italy Activity Sheets

The activity sheets include images of Italian structures printed on cards for colouring, a few word games, match-making and a spaghetti puzzle.  A couple of lines about the structures are printed on top of the cards. While doing the colouring, children also get to associate the structures and the facts with the country they are learning.

 

Pasta Play Set

The pasta play set made us play another round of bakery game. A few cloth-made pasta pieces of different types along with picture cards of the same helps to develop match-making skill in children. Check the video to find Vihaan match the toy pastas to the right pasta card. The little box that comes with the pasta set acts like a memorable souvenir. Well, in our game, it became the parcel box for a pasta take away 😆

 

Play Passport

The play passport is a cute booklet with real pages inside that can make a stamp collection book. We did a few interesting activities with it. Firstly, we got to learn what a passport is and why we need one. Vihaan also took a look at dad’s real passport and the different visa stampings inside it.

We also played a pretend play airport game. Vihaan built an aeroplane with his play bricks and an airport with his wooden blocks. I was the pretend play Vihaan who was travelling to Italy. And he had fun in doing the immigration stamping on my passport with the stamping play kit (not included in the box).

The pages have a header saying ‘country stamps’ and a footer, ‘name of the country’. We made Vihaan’s first stamp book with postal stamps of Italy, India and USA. Interestingly, the box also includes an Italy postage stamp-sticker. The pages and the stamp are thoughtful inclusions in the box to inculcate interest in children about stamp collection.

 

Envelope with Post Cards

With the culture of letter writing almost having faded in the recent years, I found this particularly helpful to talk to Vihaan about posts, envelope, cards, letters and postal stamps. There were also two little stickers of the Italy flag and stamp. The cards have written on them some little facts about Italy that can be read out to kids. We plan to play a post card-post box-post office-post man game soon.

Overall, we had a happy learn and play time doing the activities from the Globe Trotters Box. Do check our video to gain additional visual understanding of the activities.

As a parent, I definitely recommend Globe Trotters Box for children above 4 years.

As a parent, here are a coupIe of things I would like Globe Trotters Box to do differently:

1. The mosaic pieces could have been larger in size for kids to handle with ease.
2. The surface of the colouring cards do not support colouring with crayons and colour pencils. It looks solely meant for colouring with sketch pens. As most children would prefer crayon colouring, a suitable colouring surface might be preferred.

And a couple of suggestions for additions to the box:

1. The photo frame has a stand for vertical orientation. I would like an interchangeable stand orientation if that is not too much an expectation 🙂
2. The stamping activity we did with the play passport was interesting and appropriate to do with a passport. An Italy visa stamp and a stamp pad in the box can add some fun.

If you like to subscribe for Globe Trotters Box, please visit their website, Globe Trotters Box, for details on the available country boxes and subscription plans.

The box is priced at Rs. 899 (subject to vary). To buy the Italy box, check the following sites:

GlobeTrottersBox

Amazon

Flipkart

Here are a few pointers for parents while making their children explore the box:

1. The box is intended to make children learn and play over a period of one month. So, let the children pick the ones they like to do as and when they get interested. Let them not be rushed to complete the activities. Some children might like to open everything at once but not get to focus on anything. In such cases, it is better to let them open one at a time instead of opening the entire box.
2. Not all four-year-olds are the same. Some can do the craft activities on their own, some might need help. Depending upon your kid’s experience in crafts, analyse how much help he/she would or wouldn’t require with each of the activities.
3. If you assume that the activity box can engage your children on their own lending you some free time, I would advice you to re-consider. At least, for the first time when they try a new activity, please spend time with them in explaining or joining them.
4. Think of creative ideas that can put the box contents to use for playing and learning. For example, quite different ways of pretend plays can be done with the pizza set, pasta set, passport and the post cards. It is up to you and your child of how much you can try beyond the given instructions to utilize the contents.
5. Make sure to put the world map on their room wall. Let reading the map be an everyday activity to them.

If you have had fun exploring a Globe Trotters Box, please share your experiences below in the comments. Your words can be helpful to a prospective parent-buyer.

Disclaimer: We received the box from Globe Trotters Box in exchange for a honest review. The opinions expressed, the video and all the images are mine.