I like the idea of children’s magazines. I really do. They’re thin enough not to overwhelm. They often have an element of education. Mostly. Take a subscription out and they fall through the letter box on a regular basis, which just adds to the excitement. Who doesn’t like nice mail?
Needless to say, we’ve tried a few children’s magazines over the years. The best have been full of wonderful facts. Never quite fitting the bill, as they were still liberally sprinkled with adverts. Grr! Don’t get me started. Same effect as sweets by the shop tills.
So, with this in mind, I was intrigued when I heard about Amazing magazine. Not only did it promise interesting facts linked to the UK National Curriculum, but no ads.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. I hoped it would interest Youngest. At 8, he loves facts. I hadn’t expected Middle One, at 11, to find the magazine quite so tempting, but she did.
They were soon quoting facts and wanting to try out the different activities. The magazine provides information in bitesize chunks.
“Did you know that ….? Can we try this?”
All music to a Mother’s ears. Swapping the magazines between them, it actually kept them entertained for longer than I expected. Returning to them the next day.
Today, they chose a good STEM activity to try. Making catapults.
Soon they were competing to see how far they could propel the pompoms. Then moving on to see how far they could propel anything that fitted in the bottle top. Curious minds.
The subjects and information are spot on. I can see that the magazine is covering subjects that they cover at school, but in a fun way. Learning should be fun, right? I even found myself enjoying it. Who knew how many idioms are based on body parts? Or how long hair, on average, grows in a year?
Both children gave a big thumbs up to the magazines. I have got to agree with them. It does fit the bill. They thought that the target age group of 7 to 11 years old was just right.
Now for your chance to sample this new magazine. The publishers of Amazing have kindly offered to send 10 of my readers a copy of the Amazing magazine, so you can see for yourself.
If you’d like to win a copy, leave a comment (including your email address in the box provided, so I can contact you if you win) on this post, telling me your favourite educational project that you’ve been involved in. Even if it was somebody else’s homework and you were just helping by holding part of it until the glue set. It counts. Or just tell me something interesting.
(I’d say ours was the viking boats or world book day costumes. Although the model explaining why we get less daylight hours in winter, may need to be blogged one of these days.)
Leave a comment by the end of 6th April and we’ll pick 10 random names to receive one copy of the Amazing magazine. UK residents only. If you can’t wait till then, Amazing are offering my readers 10% off subscriptions. Enter the code WOW10 at their checkout. To find out more, check out Amazing magazine’s website.
Good luck everyone.
Now closed. Emails sent to all the winners.
added: we made an articulated hand from the magazine too.
Disclaimer: I received the magazines in return for an honest review. All words and opinions are my own.
That does look intriguing, I hear you on the adverts they are a pain aren’t they. I would love to see a copy, thank you for the chance. My favourite educational project? That’s a tough one as we have done a fair few of them, an early one on castles was fun but I think it would have to be our latest on the weather. I have being doing this just with eldest and the knowledge he has gained now exceeds mine, we made lots of weather measuring items which are still going strong……
I’d give a copy to my nephew who’s 10.
My favourite ever educational activity was the van de graf at school. For some reason my hair absolutely loved the static and it was quite long. If get s massive halo of hair around my head. I wish we had phone cameras then, but I have no picture.
The tarantula costume I made for my son for ‘mini-beast’ day at school. Consisted of his backpack covered in black velvet with 4 tights legs stuffed with plastic carrier bags and sewn on. The gusset of the tights was sewn up at one end and used as a hat with 8 googly eyes on it! He was only 5 at the time….
Love to give it a look, always looking for ideas for our home edding
x
Redoing as noticed email was wrong just as sent x
this looks fab! x
We love science in our house and try to do some experiments every weekend. Last weekend we’ve been changing the colour of the celery sticks 🙂 clear plastic cups, celery sticks and food colouring. We’ve had so much fun watching for a few days how the celery sticks change the colours 🙂
Growing crystals is another passion of ours. Keep dissolving salt in a clear cup/jar of boiling water until no more salt will dissolve. Put a string in the solution and watch the crystals grow over the next week or so 🙂
I would give it to Skye aged 7, my granddaughter, she is so bright and can read really well. She loves to act and sing and I ahve seen some of her plays in school.
sallycollingwood@hotmail.co.uk
My favourite is an ongoing one, which i have done countless times with all my nephews and neices – i have a black and white dog, and when he sleeps in the sun, his black bits are always way warmer than his white bits – really obvious when stroking him – i think they have known about how different colours absorb heat differently for ever!
Unfortunately, i only have one left who is young enough for this magazine – she just turned 10.
I loe reading your blog.
Anna
The bug hotel I helped my son make for his school project, it was a great project to work on together.
We have just done some science experiments for a school homework project. Tried the coloured water on flowers – daffodils don’t work!! Did coloured drops in milk that spread into amazing patterns when you dropped in oil. also the drops of colour in oil dropping into the water layer gave good reults. We got through lots of food colouring!!
Had been meaning to try the articulated hand, seen something like it on th eweb, this magazine sounds great.
The best educational project I have been a part of was my daughters caterpillars. Watching them develop was amazing then letting them go in the garden. She enjoyed it so much we got some for her little brother 6 years later. Another more crafty school project I loved helping my daughter do was making a model of the coliseum in Italy. She had to cement every brick together. It looked amazing when it was finished
When I was younger about 10, we were studying Vikings and our homework was to make a shield. Now my dad was always one to take ove a project so I went to school with an amazingly painted shield cut from wood and all my friends had self made cardboard shields!
my grandson will love this
This magazine looks great.
Sounds a bit like the old tv show HOW
Looks great for my eldest
I helped the grandson’s with some science experiments on their last visit and we had great fun using odds and ends of junk to do them.They were supposed to choose just two from a long list and ended up doing all those we could find materials for so I know they would love this magazine.
This would go to my Nephew Jack who who love this.
Sounds good my kids will love it x
these look great always looking for new ideas for the grandchildren as I love crafting of any kind andwhen they come they enjoy it as much as myself.. fingers crossed
Until quite recently I was the Enterprise Co-ordinator in a school for students with Severe and/or Profound and Multiple Learning Difficulties. I had arranged for our school to run a stall on our local market for Christmas selling items that the students had made in their Enterprise lessons. In order to ensure we had enough items to sell I also organised an Enterprise enrichment week where each class made items to sell on thew stall. Each class made something different, beautiful decoupage cards, Floral arrangements,a variety of Christmas gifts etc and everybody had so much fun learning new skills. This was about seven years ago and we ran the Christmas stall for three days but we have continued to run it every year since and we now run it for a whole week.
My son loves nature so we took part in the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch and noted birds on our birdfeeders and on the lawn.
Helped my grandso with his Taj Mahal project – he made his model from recycyled materials
This looks fun! I would love to share with my grandchildren!
Great prize
look an amazing mag to resd for me n the kids to get stook in
I bet my Daughter would love this magazine! 😛
my kids would love it
Look like it would fit the bill for an extremely keen nearly seven year old. I think I like maths monster the most. It is engaging and encourages us to get out and about.
I’m actually looking forward to helping my nephews and niece with their projects in the future.
My son’s class have been doing a project about polar bears and I helped him make one for his homework out of paper mache. His teacher loved it so much that she’s asked me to come and help with the next class craft project in the new term – lighthouses and life boats! Wish me luck! 🙂
would be great for my nieces and nephews
Drew a Map of Easter Island, was a treasure Map X marks the Spot for the Easter School Fayre. It went down really well.
I’d give this copy to my daughter, she’s magazine mad and at that age where she’s really interested in everything – so she’d love this 🙂 xx
This look great
This looks a wonderful magazine!
This looks like a brilliant magazine, that I would love to give my children to read. My favourite project was probably when I helped my eldest daughter build a small volcano for her Geography lessons. We sat at the table for hours with newspaper and glue stuck to everything. We built a structure and then covered it in with the paper, We finally finished it after a few days.We painted it and it looked very realistic. I was very proud of what my daughter and I had achieved, as I had never attempted Paper Mache before that. Soon after, we made the ‘lava’ of the volcano with vinegar, baking soda and red colouring. It was extremely messy! We painted a cardboard background and she took it into school, with a giant smile on her ace. She came home that night with lots of stickers hanging proudly on her uniform. She explained to me that they were given to her by her teacher because of her volcano! I was very happy and I will never forget that project!
I think my daughter would love this, looks very interesting.
I think mine was helping to build a volcano!
my daughters homework was to make paper and squash it as flat as possible, it was very messy