Magazines for preschoolers?

[fivi2]

All this magazine talk...

I thought I'd suggest magazine subscriptions for my sister to get my girls. They will be three right before christmas (and love getting mail!).

What are good magazines for the 3-4 year olds?

TIA

[amldaley]

Highlights! I loved it so much when I wa 3-8 or so that I did not even mind going to the Dr office!!!!! Is it still being published?????

[egoldber]

Sarah loved Your Big Backyard at that age.

http://www.nwf.org/kids/kzPage.cfm?siteid=2

It's great if your kids love animals. :)

ETA: Highlights is good, but it's definitely for the reading crowd. They now make one with just the picture puzzles though and I think there is a Highlight Lite kind of mag too.

[SnuggleBuggles]

My Big Back Yard or Ranger Rick. I think there is a Highlights Jr. that would be more age appropriate (my ds didn't really like Highlights till 5+).

Beth

[jjordan]

My dd gets National Geographic little kids and LOVES it.

[amldaley]

My Big Back Yard or Ranger Rick. I think there is a Highlights Jr. that would be more age appropriate (my ds didn't really like Highlights till 5+).

Beth


ooohhh...Ranger Rick! That was good one, too!

[thomma]

We liked both Wild Animal Baby and National Geographic Little Kids. Actually most of the copies are still in reading rotation. Now ds can read them by himself.

Kim
ds&dd 5/03

[fivi2]

Thanks for the quick replies!

I think I have narrowed it down to:

Your Big Backyard
Ladybug
Nat. Geo Little Kids
Highlights High Five (the younger one)

Click looks good too, but I think maybe next year (looks a little advanced).

Any help on cutting my list in half? :) Can anyone compare any of them?

Thanks for the suggestions!

[egoldber]

One thing to note about the National Geographic mags is that while the Little Kids version doesn't have ads, the regular NG Kids version does. I didn't realize that when I subscribed to it for Sarah and was very disappointed in that.

The Highlights mags and the NWF mags (Your Big Backyard, Ranger Rick, etc.) do not have ads.

[LarsMal]

DS loves his Highlights High Five. He gets so excited to do the hidden picture game when it comes. My grandparents actually ordered it for him. I don't think they even realized what they were getting (I think my g'father thought it was a book-of-the-month club). Oh well, he loves it and I'm glad they did it!

[Gena]

My son loves Highlights High Five. There is a feature on their website where you can preview sample pages. You can even print them out to see if your child is interested in them.

http://www.highlights.com/mt/highlights_high_five.jsp (click on "Peek Inside!")

[Ceepa]

I can say Your Big Backyard is all animals, all the time. As it turns out, our subscription bored my DC. If your DC loves animals then it's a nice quality mag.

Ladybug is great if your DC loves listening to stories. One of my kids didn't have the attention span for the style of writing in Ladybug and the other was again bored because he was really into science instead.

NG for Kids. I have no experience with it and DC, but when I was small I adored checking out back issues of World from the library (the original version of NG Kids).

Highlights High Five. We've only looked at these in the doctor's waiting room, but DC really enjoyed what little we saw of it.

Can you check out some issues from your library? Our library has them displayed in the kids room. This way you can get a feel for the formats, reading levels, and most importantly, interest from your DC.

[fivi2]

I can say Your Big Backyard is all animals, all the time. As it turns out, our subscription bored my DC. If your DC loves animals then it's a nice quality mag.

Ladybug is great if your DC loves listening to stories. One of my kids didn't have the attention span for the style of writing in Ladybug and the other was again bored because he was really into science instead.

NG for Kids. I have no experience with it and DC, but when I was small I adored checking out back issues of World from the library (the original version of NG Kids).

Highlights High Five. We've only looked at these in the doctor's waiting room, but DC really enjoyed what little we saw of it.

Can you check out some issues from your library? Our library has them displayed in the kids room. This way you can get a feel for the formats, reading levels, and most importantly, interest from your DC.

Thanks for the comparisons! I think I will have to see if the library has them or else make a trip to B&N!

[jerigirl]

Definitely check your library. Ours has several of the magazines discussed in this thread. At our library they are unfortunately not available for check out, only to read in the library.

ETA: I am not sure if you did this already, but usually the magazines' websites have sample issues that you can scroll thru and look at. That was helpful to me to narrow down what I wanted to look at at the library IRL.

[ett]

Thanks for the quick replies!

I think I have narrowed it down to:

Your Big Backyard
Ladybug
Nat. Geo Little Kids
Highlights High Five (the younger one)

Click looks good too, but I think maybe next year (looks a little advanced).

Any help on cutting my list in half? :) Can anyone compare any of them?

Thanks for the suggestions!

I definitely suggest Highlights High Five. DS1 gets it and he still really enjoys it. There are fun activities to do in addition to stories of varying lengths. I think overall it's a high quality magazine.

We got Nat. Geo Little Kids for a year and I wasn't really impressed with it. It's quite small (around 6" x 6") and I thought the content was too easy for 3-4 year olds.

Your Big Backyard is good if they like animals.

Ladybug may be a bit overlap with Highlights High Five.

If I had to choose 2 I would choose Highlights High Five and Your Big Backyard.

[dhano923]

We get Preschool Playtime (Playtime PReschool?) which has a lot of the PBS characters -- Bob the Builder, Cailliou, etc. It's short stories, games, learning games that are meant for the 3-6 age group. Both my kids love it.