My kids love to read! Well, they’re only 3 and 4 years old, so I guess they love to listen to Mommy or Daddy (or ANYONE) read to them.
We’ve been huge fans of our public library for years, out of necessity because it keeps us from reading the same books over and OVER. Another great way to keep our reading repertoire fresh is to subscribe to monthly kids magazines. It’s a little bit of magic, considering that they are too young to understand weeks and months. All they know is that, BAM!, one day some brand new reading material comes in the mail. It’s a surprise every time!
As a kid growing up, we got magazines like National Geographic, LIFE, Highlights, Turtle, and a few others that I’ve forgotten. But they were all for older kids — reading aged kids. Fortunately, there are now magazines targeted specifically to the preschool age group. I thought I’d list of few of our favorites, as well as the favorites of some of the other DMB Contributors.
High Five – the under 5 years old version of the old standby “Highlights”. It has a great mix of relatable, seasonal stories and simple games. One of the stories always contains beginner Spanish (along with pronunciation guide). There is always a simple recipe that you can make with your children, and often a cut-out-and-assemble book for practicing with scissors.
Hidden Pictures – comes with High Five. Although you can buy High Five without it, I recommend buying it if you can. It contains search-and-find with stickers , very simple mazes, matching games and other fun stuff. The cool thing is, two Hidden Picture magazines come at a time so there is one for each of my kids. Which is good because the 3 year old likes to rip the stickers out and put them all over the house, while the 4 year old is very intent on assembling the puzzles exactly as they should be done. If they had to share the same Hidden Pictures magazine, fighting would ensue!
LEGO club magazine – we don’t get this one (yet! I just signed up!), but Heather’s children do. When you sign up for their club it asks for your child’s age and they will receive the magazine targeted to their age group. Younger children will receive the Duplo-based magazine and older children the LEGO version.
Ladybug – Younger version of Cricket magazine which kind of seems to be targeted at girls, although that’s never mentioned directly. It’s very short and cute with repeating bug characters in the stories and poems. Companion magazine to Click.
Click – the gender-neutral or younger boy version of Cricket and companion to Ladybug, the magazine is also short. This one focuses more on one topic per month, answering questions about that particular topic. Not quite as overall educational as High Five, but the illustrations are fun and there is a recurring character set in Click as well.
National Geographic Little Kids – just like the adult version and the bigger kids magazine, Little Kids has beautiful photography. It contains far fewer words than the older kids version so that little ones don’t get bored. At this age, my kids just love any animals and Little Kids really includes a lot of great animal facts and pictures without being as overwhelming as the older kids version. They love to take this magazine with them to bed to look at as they fall asleep.
There are also magazines for nearly every toy-related interest such as Thomas And Friends, Sophia The First, and Strawberry Shortcake, but we have not tried any of those.
Have you?
I’d love to hear about your favorite preschooler magazines in the comments!
