Lelu Box Review: Real-Life Spanish Practice with STEAM Activities (And No Planning!)
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*Disclosure: I received a complimentary Lelu box in order to write this review. A positive review was not required and all opinions are my own.
“¿Mamá, cuándo podemos hacer nuestra caja de Lelu?”
This is the question that my kids have asked me every single morning for the last month—”Mom, when can we do our Lelu box!?”
We are new to Lelu, and we are loving it. Read on to find out why…and to catch my discount code at the end!
What is Lelu?
If you’ve never heard of Lelu before, here’s what you should know: Lelu is a new subscription box focused on Spanish + STEAM activities (STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics). It’s suitable for kids ages 4 and up, and comes monthly to your door packed with the following:
Four hands-on activities (one per week) and all materials;
A detailed guide to the month’s theme, with background information and instructions;
A monthly calendar of activities with links to supplemental resources;
Invitations to online community events, including parent support groups and group events.
All of this is customized to your child’s Spanish proficiency level—from beginner to native speaker. And, if you choose, you can also enroll your children in a weekly conversation class that relates to the monthly boxes (at additional cost). To my knowledge, there’s no other Spanish subscription box that includes that, so it’s a truly unique offering!
This wrap-around approach is great for helping parents create a Spanish immersion environment at home, whether they themselves are native speakers or not. And since I am always stressing the need for real-life usage of foreign languages, that’s something I can really support!
Our Experience with Lelu’s Spanish + STEAM Box
You might be surprised to learn, therefore, that when Lelu first reached out to me a few months ago for a review, I actually turned them down. I was hesitant about the subscription box model, since I’m a minimalist by nature. Did I really want to pay to have more stuff come into my house? More supplies that I’d have to organize? More activities to supervise? Was the content really so amazing that we couldn’t get it from all of the other bilingual resources that we’re already using? At the time, I hadn’t seen their boxes and so I wasn’t convinced.
But then, my oldest started asking to learn more about engineering. He’s obsessed with inventing new things and often spends his daily rest time drawing up plans for new gadgets. I wondered if Lelu might be just what we needed….so I decided to eat some crow and reach out to Ana Leyva, the founder of Lelu, to see if she might be willing to reconsider.
Thankfully, Ana didn’t hold my initial resistance against me, and she sent me a box right away. After spending a month with our Lelu box, I can heartily say this:
Lelu far exceeded my expectations, both in terms of quality and enjoyment, and I highly recommend it!
There’s a lot to like about Lelu, but here’s what I found to be the most valuable as a bilingual homeschooler:
The in-depth content. Our family loves to take deep dives into the subjects that interest us, and Lelu made that easy. Not only were the weekly activities great teaching tools in themselves, but the supplemental resources that Lelu included were also excellent! This month’s theme was architecture, and with Lelu, we got to watch videos about the tallest buildings in Latin America, participate in an online chat with working architects, and join in on a family sing-along. This was definitely content that I could not have found or pulled together on my own, and I’m grateful for and impressed by how thoughtfully Lelu’s education team assembled the month’s activities. You can really tell that Lelu is the product of skilled and serious educators.
My kids’ enthusiasm for Lelu—and how much they learned. Both of my older boys really enjoyed the activities that Lelu had planned for the month, and wanted to learn more about architecture as a result. I’d say that proves that Lelu is a success! Per my boys’ request, we extended our Lelu learning by checking more books on architecture out of the library and going on an “architecture walk” to study all of the bridges in our community. By the end of the month, they had learned so much about architecture through their Lelu box: from the basic responsibilities of an architect, to the design process, to the different kind of bridges, and even basic physics. And of course, as a part of that, they learned a whole new set of vocabulary words in Spanish.
The generous supplies. I am notoriously bad at hands-on projects, mostly because I struggle to gather all of the materials they need. But with Lelu, hands-on projects were effortless, since they include every single thing you need to do their activities. I mean, they even sent us a single glue stick—which I appreciate!
The do-ability of the projects. I’ve written before about how challenging it is to homeschool with an active, high-needs toddler. I was impressed that my 4 and 7 year-old could play Lelu’s games independently, complete most of the projects by themselves (with a bit of guidance), and my oldest could read the materials on his own.
The live classes with native-speaking teachers. These really set Lelu apart from other subscription boxes on the market. Not only do the boxes encourage kids to use Spanish, but the live classes give them the need to do so. I sat in on a class with my kids and was very impressed by how well-organized it was and how much Spanish my kids got to speak. Like all of the other parts of Lelu, the class was thoughtfully designed to have the most impact and be most effective at encouraging my kids’ use of their Spanish.
In the simplest terms: Lelu got my kids using their Spanish, they learned a ton, and they had a great time doing it. I’d call that a major success!
Who will love using Lelu’s Spanish + STEAM Box?
I think that Lelu offers a uniquely high-quality resource for families of all kinds, but I would especially recommend it for:
Bilingual families who want to encourage Spanish use at home;
Bilingual homeschoolers who want to add in more Spanish-language STEAM curriculum;
Homeschooling families who want to supplement their Spanish curriculum; and
Homeschooling families interested in hands-on STEAM learning (in English or Spanish!).
If you fall in one or more of those categories, Lelu is a great fit!
I’d especially encourage bilingual families whose kids may be exhibiting some language resistance to give Lelu a try. If you speak Spanish at home, but your child doesn’t want to (and we’ve all been there), it could be that they just need to have a little more fun in Spanish. Lelu is one way to bring more joy to your bilingual parenting journey—without extra planning on your part.
How to get your first Lelu box—and a discount code for you!
If you’re interested in trying Lelu for yourself, I have a discount code for you.
Head on over to the Lelu Shop and use the code LANGUAGELEARNING to receive 10 percent off of the subscription of your choice.
And do let me know how you like it! We enjoyed Lelu so much that we’re participating in their summer learning challenge, and are looking forward to more fun boxes in the future!
