S/O: Your Big Backyard

[annlaura]

I subscribed my 3yo DS to Your Big Backyard thinking he'd love it because he loves animals and nature. But he's been kind of meh about it. When it arrives in the mail, he's happy to have mail but doesn't care to read it right away. He enjoys it well enough once we do read it, but not to reread it. And the recent issue kind of upset him with the use of buffalo instead of bison. Do your kids love it? Don't love it? What ages? Do they already know quite a bit about animals/nature? I guess I'm a little disappointed, and trying to figure out if he'll like it more later. Thanks. :)

[K&Rs Mom]

Mine have not been crazy about any of the Wildlife Foundation magazines (tried a few different levels). They prefer the Cricket magazines (Ask & Appleseeds at the moment, but they have younger ones too). I think the Wildlife ones kind of talk down to kids in a way that the Cricket ones don't.

[Whereneverever]

My DD (3 years old) loves the little book you make and the pictures. Otherwise she's quickly through it.

[Momofeat]

My oldest DD has always loved all those magazines. Even now, she read the Animal Baby books that belong to my ds.

 

Middle dd enjoyed them, but I knew she didn't love wildlife as much as my oldest dd, so we switched to Clubhouse Jr. from Focus on the Family. She loves that one.

 

My ds isn't paying much attention to the Animal Baby books at all, so I'll probably try to find something else for him. He does love books, but he isn't into wildlife.

[NanceXToo]

My 4 (almost 5) y/o hasn't been overly interested either. I'll be like, "Oh, look, you got a magazine in the mail! Let's sit down and read it!"

 

And he'll either outright refuse, or he'll sit with me and listen to a page or two and then get up and wander away.

 

He's never come back and ASKED to read it.

 

I did manage to get his interest a little better with a "Disney & Me" magazine when we sat down together and I showed him how to do the various activities in the book.

[stripe]

My kids liked the Wild Animal Baby. I've found quite a few at library book sales and thrift shops (for about 50c each), so I bought a small pile that way, because I thought the subscription was overpriced for the baby ones. My kids read them, but Click is more popular.

[CourtneyChn]

My girls both loved Your Big Backyard and Wild Animal Baby and my oldest liked Ranger Rick. Now we get Click and Appleseed which I like better.

[give_me_a_latte]

We used to get Animal Baby but that was quite below his level. We switched to Big Backyard and yep, getting the "meh" here too. He wanders off and looks at it every so often. I've never tried to sit down and actually read/do the activities with him. We just pretty much look at the pictures and I may tell him a little fact or something about the animal. But then he's over it ;-) So I just stick them on my homeschool science shelf for future use.

[hsbaby]

My kids have never shown much of an interest. On a funny side note, my great grandmother bought my dd (now 13) a subscription for her bday ears ago. We never did receive the magazine and asked her about it. She had no idea why we hadn't received it. About 6 years later my grandma passed away. When going through her stuff we found three years worth of Your Big Backyard magazines on her shelf:). Guess she never put two and two together!!!