Great Deal on National Geographic Little Kids Magazine!

I love to encourage parents to get magazine subscriptions for their kids. It's a great exposure to non-fiction plus all of the comprehension strategies like questioning and predicting. I find it's a nice way to force myself to read a different kind of book to my son every month or so. Reluctant readers also seem to respond better to fun magazines and comic books sometimes. Plum District has a great sale right now for a $12 year long subscription to National Geographic Little Kids and you can get another 20% off if you enter the code NovBestsellers. You can go to Plum District or click here to find the deal. We really like this magazine. It's nice and short for younger readers plus it comes with collectible animal cards in the middle of each one. It's also a great idea to ask for a magazine subscription for the holidays from relatives. It is so fun to get kids excited about receiving something to read in the mail! Amazon can also be a good place to get good deals on magazine subscriptions.

Some other good choices for younger kids are:

Babybug - great for little fingers because it's made of tougher paper
High 5 - younger version of Highlights
Ranger Rick Jr. - younger version of Ranger Rick
Turtle
Lego Club Jr. (free!! if you sign up at Lego.com)
Sports Illustrated for Kids - not super exciting for us and written for a little older than kindergarten level, but great if you have a really big sports fan in your family!

Happy Reading! Please share if you have other favorite magazines that I missed.

Great Idea for Books During the Holidays from Delightful Children's Books

I just read this great idea from the Delightful Children's Books blog about creating a book Advent Calendar this year. Love it! I hope you check it out. I had a friend who told me about something similar long ago where she would gift wrap all of the Christmas books and allow her boys to open one per night. But I like the idea of numbering them like an Advent calendar, too! I find myself looking for fun used holiday books all year round to add to our collection. It's great to get them from the library but it's extra fun to cultivate a collection of your own oldies but goodies. You could practically only collect Jan Brett books and you would be set. She has fabulous winter and Christmas themed books like The Hat, The Mitten, and Christmas Trolls.  My first graders always used to love to look for Hedgie the hedgehog in each of her books. She also has an outstanding author website at janbrett.com. Lots of coloring pages and info about her newest books. I hope that you are starting to collect at least a small amount of books to pull out for each major holiday. I keep mine in a file cabinet drawer and we pull out the new ones at the beginning of that holiday's month. That way, it keeps everything fresh and new while you provide another reason to learn new vocabulary and get excited about books. Happy Reading!