Pros: Good mix of animal facts and fiction, educational, around $1 per issue
Cons: An occasional advertisement, paper is lower quality than some other similar magazines
The Bottom Line: An educational and entertaining magazine with a format that will appeal to kids 3-7. The subscription price is lower than other, similar magazines.
modernmarvel's Full Review: Your Big Backyard Magazine
We have had a subscription to Your Big Backyard for a couple of years. It is a great magazine for a lot of children because its broad format is likely to contain something to interest your child. The broad mix includes animal facts, stories and other short fiction pieces, puzzles and crafts.
WHAT EACH ISSUE CONTAINS
Each issue is about 32 pages long. A couple of issues have had a one page advertisement for an item that will appeal to children.
Each issue is generally themed around animals, but the magazine covers several topics within the general animal / nature theme. Your Big Backyard's themes are broader than other popular children's magazines. For example, Zoobooks, usually focuses on only one animal per issue. Kids Discover also has one topic per issue. Personally, I prefer a broad theme because the magazine is more likely to contain something that interests my children.
Your Big Backyard's format is also broader than other magazines. The magazine contains both fact and fiction, while most other childrens magazines we subscribe to are either fact or fiction. There are also puzzles, recipes and crafts. Again, I like the broad format because it is more likely to contain something we find interesting.
The format varies from issue to issue but you can typically expect an issue to contain a short fiction piece, a longer fiction piece, several pictures of animals with interesting and educational snippets of information, several pages of various puzzles and activities, one craft page, one recipe page, and a longer color photo spread of a particular animal with lots of information about that animal.
Here is a sample of what a typical issue might contain:
A full page photo called "What's That" which shows an animal and points out some of its distinctive features. The text encourages the reader to discuss the animal with the child.
Several pages of puzzles such as: mazes, how to make simple line drawings, circle pictures that start with a particular letter, color in a picture with certain colors, word finds, and a page with puzzle pieces that you need to cut apart and assemble. The puzzle pages range substantially in complexity. While a preschooler might like to scan a page to find items that start with the letter "M," most older children will turn up their nose at such an easy activity. On the other hand, some puzzles are probably too advanced for most pre-schoolers, although 6 and 7 year olds would enjoy them. If you are buying this magazine for only one child, consider that they might not be interested in all of the puzzles.
One problem with the magazine is that some puzzles require the child to draw on the page or to cut pieces out of the page to solve the puzzle. Once they have done this, the puzzle can't be reused. We only have two children reading the magazine, so that doesn't really matter to us, but for those who like to hold onto magazines, it might be a problem. It would be better if the puzzles were concentrated on pull-out pages.
Recipe: There is a one page recipe for kids to make. Unfortunately, it is rarely a healthy snack and usually relies on chocolate, sugar, snack foods, ice cream or other treats as the main ingredients. I wished they focused more on healthy food. I have no problem getting my kids to eat treats. It would be better if they tried to make vegetables or fruit appealing.
Craft: The crafts are typically aimed at kids around 4-7 and involve materials that you probably have in your house or can obtain easily.
ILLUSTRATIONS
The magazine has a lot of high quality photography of animals. There are also high-quality drawings for some of the games and story illustrations.
THE PUBLISHER
Your Big Backyard is published by the National Wildlife Foundation, an organization dedicated to conservation. Some of the articles and stories have a conservation slant to them, however this is not a political magazine and the messages are subtle.
The National Wildlife also published Ranger Rick, a magazine designed for older children.
PRICE
This is one of the least expensive magazine subscriptions for children we have. A one year subscription is 12 issues for $10-15, depending on the source.
AGE APPROPRIATENESS
The publisher says this magazine is targeted to ages 3 to 7. The magazine is designed to be interactive, not to be read by the child alone. A lot of the stories and pictures have questions to encourage the reader to discuss the images and stories with the child.
Personally, I think 3-7 is a broad range. The magazine accomplishes this by including some articles and puzzles that will appeal more to younger children and some that will appeal more to older children. This means that if you are buying this magazine for one child on either end of the range, there may be some pages you don't use. On the other hand, this could be a great magazine for siblings to share.
MORE INFORMATION
The magazine is full color and printed on nice paper, but it is not the heavy glossy stuff of Zoobooks or Kids Discover. That said, some of our issues are three years old
and still in good shape. The binding is the standard three staples.
The web site is: www.nwf.org. The web site has some additional science activities, games and other information.
The toll free number for subscriptions is: 1-800-611-1599.
FINAL RECOMMENDATION
I like this magazine. It has a broad format and both of my kids always find several things in the magazine that are interesting. I recommend it because it is a good value for the money and it has a lot of quality content.
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