Information about
Charlie and Lola
Target Age
3-6 year olds
Episode Duration
12 minutes
Show Summary
Charlie is seven. He has a little sister Lola, who is small and very funny. She is nearly five, loves pink milk and knows exactly what she does and doesn’t want to do. It’s often down to Charlie to persuade her otherwise and to teach her the way of the world. Each 12-minute episode takes one of Lauren Child’s award winning children’s books and brings it alive using a mix of animation, cut out shapes, photomontage and archive footage. It plays heavily on the joy of a child’s imagination, so eating mashed potato becomes a trip to the top of Mount Fuji to eat a spoonful of cloud fluff, while tomatoes become moonsquirters from outer space! No adults appear in the programmes and all the dialogue is voiced by children, enabling young viewers to identify with the main characters and lose themselves in Charlie and Lola’s fantastic adventures.
Main Characters
Charlie
– Lola’s big brother. He’s seven, sensible and often helps Lola find her way in the world. His best friend is Marv, and the two of them spend a lot of time inventing brilliant adventures, chasing monsters and dressing up as pirates.
Lola
– Charlie’s independent four-year-old little sister, who knows her own mind but still has a lot to learn. She loves pink milk and playing with Charlie and best friend Lotta.
Educational Benefits
Charlie and Lola helps children to:
- Use their imagination and come up with fantastic adventures.
- Cope with common problems such as losing things.
- Talk about their friendships and relationships with their siblings.
- Follow the narrative of a story and understand the resolution at the end.
Website benefits and summary
The website offers lots of different games. Have fun testing matching and memory skills with the Pairs game and Flip Flop. What sort of combinations can you and your child come up with? There’s more sorting and matching in the Planet game about recycling and the Music game, which suggests musical sequences on a computer keyboard.
You can also join in with the Charlie and Lola theme tune and do some colouring in, stamping and printing out with the Colouring Book.
Games
Colouring game
Help Lola colour in her colouring book, using the patterns and colours on the website. Print out finished works of art or print them out in black and white for colouring in at home. Colouring and drawing help children with creativity and motor skills.
Pairs and Flip Flop
A simple matching and memory game that will challenge children to remember the last card revealed. Matching games help with pre-numeracy skills that lay the foundations for maths later on - sorting and seeing patterns all help with numeracy from an early age.
With Flip Flop, children are still matching cards but they need to have a think about if they make a pair. Make sure to match them all before Mr Albertine eats all the peas!
Music Game
Follow the tune Lola plays with the computer keyboard. Children have to follow Lola’s musical hopping sequence. Following a sequence is great for memory skills and understanding a pattern. Making music is also a great chance for children to discover their creativity.
Pink Milk
Use the arrow keys to catch the pink milk bottles. This is a simple catching game, though the use of the arrow keys makes it best suited to older pre-schoolers.
Planet
Use the mouse to drop items for recycling in the boxes. Match the items to the labels on the boxes. This game will help children with recycling at home, understanding how different items go into different containers and are recycled in different ways.
Maze game
Help Lola and Lotta get to the centre of the maze. Using the arrow keys, this game will challenge children’s problem-solving and planning skills - can they think ahead to work out the best route, can they remember to drop a white pebble to find their way and can they do it all in the limited time and beat Charlie and Marv?
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