Walk into any gift shop, toy shop or online marketplace and you will find products that call themselves educational. The label is applied so broadly that it tells a parent almost nothing about whether a product will actually support what their child is learning at school.
Little Wigwam products are different, and the reason is straightforward: every educational product in our range is designed by graphic designers with input from the beginning, from qualified teachers. Not reviewed by a teacher after the fact or approved by someone with a background in education, but designed from the ground up by people who have stood in primary school classrooms, taught the national curriculum, and know from direct experience what children at each stage of their education actually need.
This is one of the things we are most proud of about Little Wigwam, and we think it's worth explaining in detail, because the difference between a product that calls itself educational and one that is genuinely designed to support learning is not always visible from the outside. It shows up in specific decisions on what is included, what is left out, how information is presented, and which concepts get their own dedicated product rather than being folded into something more generic.
What teacher-designed actually means
Teaching the national curriculum isn't the same as knowing its contents. A subject expert knows their subject, and in this case a teacher knows their subject and knows how children learn it, including which concepts come first, which ones children find hard, which representations work at which age, and which details matter for what comes next.
That knowledge is what our designers bring to every product. It's not always visible in the way a product looks, but it's visible in the decisions that shaped it.
The alphabet: two decisions that matter
Our Alphabet Placemat and Alphabet Poster look, at first glance, like any other alphabet product. Look more closely and two design decisions stand out.
First, the images alongside each letter are phonetically correct, meaning every image represents a word that begins with the sound that letter makes, not the name of the letter. This matters because phonics teaching, which is how children learn to read in English schools, works on sounds rather than letter names. A picture of an apple next to the letter A reinforces the sound correctly, whereas a picture of an aeroplane doesn't, because aeroplane begins with the vowel sound rather than the short A sound children learn first. A designer without phonics training wouldn't know the difference, but a teacher does.
Second, the letters are formed in the style that schools teach. This is not standardised across all products on the market, and it matters more than it might appear. Children who practice writing letters at home using a different formation to the one their school teaches might develop habits that need to be corrected rather than built on. Our alphabet products reinforce what is happening in the classroom rather than working against it.
Numbers: curriculum progression built into the product range
Someone unfamiliar with teaching who is designing a numbers product to help with learning to count may only make a single product. We have four, and the reason is that the national curriculum treats numbers at different ranges as distinct stages of learning rather than points on a single continuum.
Numbers to ten is an EYFS and Reception objective, numbers to twenty is a Year 1 objective, and numbers to one hundred is a Year 2 objective that extends into KS2. These are not arbitrary distinctions, as each range introduces new concepts that build on the previous one, and children work within each range for a sustained period before moving to the next.
Our Numbers 1 to 10 Placemat, Numbers 1 to 20 Placemat and Numbers 1 to 100 Placemat track that progression exactly. Each product is designed for a specific stage of the curriculum rather than attempting to cover everything at once. A child working on numbers to twenty doesn't need a placemat that goes to one hundred, and in fact it may be unhelpful. A child working on numbers to one hundred benefits from the colour coding by groups of ten that supports place value understanding, one of the key Year 2 and KS2 maths objectives.
On the Numbers 1 to 100 products, each number is also written as a word in the style children are taught, connecting the numeral to its written form in the way the curriculum requires. That detail came from a teacher!
Number bonds: a curriculum concept, not a generic topic
Number bonds are not simply a way of presenting addition facts, they are a named and specific concept in the KS1 maths curriculum, with knowing number bonds to ten fluently listed as a Year 1 objective. Children who can recall number bonds automatically rather than working them out find addition and subtraction significantly easier as the curriculum progresses, because the bonds underpin a wide range of calculation strategies taught in KS2.
Our Number Bonds Placemat and Number Bonds Poster exist because a teacher knows that number bonds deserve their own dedicated product. They're not a subset of a general numbers range, but a specific curriculum objective that children need to encounter repeatedly and in their own right. A non-teacher is unlikely to make that distinction, but we have.
Times tables and the multiplication square: two tools for the same goal
Our Times Tables Placemat and Times Tables Poster present the tables in the sequential format that the curriculum uses for learning and reciting the twos, then the threes, then the fours. This is the format that builds table-by-table fluency and maps directly to how times tables are taught and tested in school.
Our Multiplication Square Placemat and Multiplication Square Poster present the same mathematical territory differently, as a grid where any product can be found by locating the row and column. This format makes the commutativity (the ability to switch numbers around for the same answer) of multiplication visually obvious, which is itself a KS2 curriculum objective. It also makes the patterns within the tables easier to see, and pattern recognition is one of the key strategies teachers use to make the harder tables more accessible.
Both products exist because a teacher knows that different children benefit from different representations of the same concept, and that the two formats serve complementary rather than identical purposes.
Telling the time: a curriculum objective, not an obvious inclusion
Telling the time to the hour and half past is a named Year 1 maths objective, and telling the time to quarter past and quarter to is a Year 2 objective. These are specific, assessed curriculum targets rather than general life skills that happen to feature in school.
Our Telling the Time Placemat and Telling the Time Poster exist because a teacher knows that clock face familiarity with clear visual explanations and presentation, built through daily exposure at home, makes a meaningful difference when children encounter this topic formally in Year 1 and Year 2. And the likelihood is that they'll ask questions, so parents can reinforce what the products teach and children will be even better equipped.
Geography: the curriculum's own organising principle
The KS2 geography curriculum requires children to develop knowledge of countries, capitals and continents. It organises the world geographically, by region and continent, rather than alphabetically or by political relationship. This is the organising principle our teachers brought to the flags products.
On our Flags of the World Flash Cards, the reverse of each card is colour coded by continent. This isn't a design choice made for purely aesthetic reasons, rather it reflects how geography teachers organise geographical knowledge by region first, and country second. A child who sorts their flags by continent is doing exactly what the KS2 geography curriculum asks of them whereas a child who encounters the same flags in alphabetical order is not.
Our Geography Placemat Pack brings together the World Map, UK Map, Europe Map and Flags and Capitals placemats as a set, reflecting the geographical scales the KS2 curriculum moves through 'local and national' in lower KS2, and 'European and global' in upper KS2. The four placemats together cover that progression, and that's why they are what we've designed and produced.
Science: products that track the curriculum, not the subject
Our science products aren't there simply because science is interesting, though it is! They are there because specific science topics appear at specific points in the national curriculum, and products that make those topics visually familiar before, during and after children encounter them formally give a genuine advantage.
Earth and space, including the solar system, is an upper KS2 science topic taught in Year 5. Our Solar System Placemat and Solar System Poster are timed to that. Our Dinosaurs Placemat is grounded in real species data, with actual dinosaur names, periods, diets and sizes rather than just decorative illustrations. This reflects the fact that evolution and the history of life on Earth is an upper KS2 science curriculum topic, and children engaging with it benefit from accurate information rather than general enthusiasm.
The periodic table appears as an introduction to materials and their properties in upper KS2 science and becomes central to KS3 chemistry. Our Periodic Table Placemat, Periodic Table Poster and Periodic Table Flash Cards are positioned accordingly, being relevant from upper KS2, and genuinely valuable as preparation and consolation for secondary school science.
Tested on children, including our own
Teacher design is the starting point, but testing is what refines it. Every Little Wigwam product is tested on children (fully ethically!) before it goes into production, and we have the advantage of a toddler at home who provides the most rigorous testing environment available, daily use by an actual child, with no patience for anything that doesn't engage them.
The combination of teacher knowledge at the design stage and real child testing before launch is what produces products that work in practice as well as in theory. Educational knowledge tells you what a product should do, and children tell you whether it does it!
Why it matters to parents
For a parent choosing an educational product, teacher design is the most reliable indicator that a product will actually support what their child is learning at school rather than simply sharing a topic with it. It's the difference between an alphabet product that reinforces phonics and one that accidentally contradicts it. Between a numbers product calibrated to the right stage of the curriculum and one that covers everything at once, or between a geography product that organises knowledge the way teachers organise it and one that presents the same information in a format that doesn't connect to the classroom.
Little Wigwam has been making teacher-designed educational products since 2009. It's not a feature we added, instead it's the foundation the business was built on, and it's what every educational product in the range reflects.
Browse the full range at educational placemats, educational posters, educational flash cards and height charts.