Sandbox Book Club Recommendation #10

Sandbox Book Club Recommendation #10

Wild Animal Baby Magazine Subscription

Jax received one of the most gratifying and thoughtful birthday presents this past year when he turned two.  His good friend Colby gave him a subscription to the National Wildlife Federation's magazine, Wild Animal Baby.  It comes in the mail once every month or so and Jax's excitement about getting mail is so sweet.  We don't have a mailbox--we have to go to the post office--but I would imagine that walking out to get the mail and to see if his magazine was here would be a huge highlight of our day.

Besides the fact that there are no advertisements (which I love) and 100% of the proceeds go to benefit the NWF, it's just plain great reading.  If you go to the National Wildlife Federation's website, you can order or peruse an entire magazine here and see what it's like for yourself.  I'll tell you what Jax particularly likes about them.

He loves the big main article about the animal baby; each magazine highlights a different animal and gives a peek into how they live.  So far we've had elephant, polar bear, orangutan, and duck babies.

I like getting to talk about the different places these animals live and the pictures help illustrate different parts of the world beautifully.

He also loves the "can you find" page.  In rhyming lines, it does a sort of I Spy in a different ecosystem.  Just because the main article is about the jungle doesn't mean the rest of the magazine focuses on that area of the world.  They change it up throughout.

In this one it says "a star that lives in the sea," and I was able to introduce the idea of starfish to him.  Otherwise I don't think he'd have any idea of that yet since we haven't been to an aquarium and don't live near the ocean.  I love when he gets to learn about something completely foreign to our lives.

There's also a matching section, where they have to find the match to an animal's silhouette .  I would have thought that would be too hard for him but he likes figuring it out.

He's a deep thinker, isn't he?

The English teacher on hiatus part of me loves the finger play poem about yet another animal.  This one was about a bear coming out of hibernation.  Something we are pretty familiar with, actually.

But, although he loves reading the magazine from cover to cover, there is no greater page than the back page.  The page with the an upper and lower case letter with a corresponding animal on it.

Shocker.

I don't have any affiliation with NWF, other than the fact that I love animals and enjoy reading about them.  This is 100% my opinion that this 10 issue subscription for $15 will be some of the best money you'll spend.  The pride and excitement of receiving their very own mail, the caliber of the magazine, plus the fact that it's basically a charitable donation all make it a great investment.  I'm so grateful that we received it as a gift and will keep the subscription up for as long as my kids are interested!

Not familiar with Sandbox Book Club?  Check out the SBC tab up top or just click here to get some other great recommendations for preschoolers and babies!