Remember Ranger Rick? I sure do. I remember waiting each month for it to arrive and enjoying glossy pictures of animals that I had never seen before. I also loved the fact that I had a magazine just for me, well, for me and my brother.

Last year we set out to find a suitable magazine for our daughter, Star. Since Star had shown an affinity for animals and enjoyed our trips to our local nature center as well as the great classes for little kids at Tahoma Audubon, we thought it would be a nice monthly reminder for us all to take in a little more of the natural world.

The best magazine out there for the young set is published by the National Wildlife Federation- Your Big Backyard for ages 3-7. We enjoy Your Big Backyard because it has great pictures as well as stories and activities for kids and families. The magazine’s environmental messages are gentle, but they foster a love of nature that is really the seed to becoming aware of concepts like conservation and environmentalism. They also publish Animal Baby (ages 0-4) and Ranger Rick (ages 7 and up).

I also recommend our own Woodland Park Zoo’s @ the Zoo. It’s free with a membership and full of great stories about animals from around the world. If the cold weather keeps you away from the zoo (although winter is a great time to visit), you can always flip through your copies of @ the Zoo and plan your next visit.

You might also want to look at Zootles (ages 2-6) and Zoobooks (ages 5 and up). Each issue focuses on one animal and provides a variety of activities, stories and beautiful pictures.
 
There are some other potentially good magazines out there, but I have yet to get my hands on copies. Specifically, Cousteau Kids looks promising and what a great opportunity to revisit all those 70s Jaques Cousteau documentaries about aquatic life. And from the editors of Ladybug comes the magazine Click about the sciences, nature and the environment. Ladybug is a well-known, popular kid’s magazine so I would guess Click is a good bet too.

I’d also like to note that I plan on staying away from National Geographic publications for kids. I love the yellow-bordered glossy magazine for adults, but National Geographic Kids is full of advertisements for products like Pop Tarts and Fruit Loops, which don’t really belong in a kids’ nature magazine anyway.

If you are looking for a last minute waste-free gift, a subscription to one of these magazines would make a little one happy all year long.


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