Ladybug Magazine

Last Christmas, Ana's grandparents gave her a one-year subscription to Ladybug Magazine, a periodic publication for the 3-6 year olds, with about 9 issues/year I think.

I loved Chanda Mama magazine when I was little. Vikram and Vetaal stories both terrified and intrigued me, and even the last page Poppins hard candy ads were presented as a simple page-long graphic story.

Cricket's Ladybug is wonderful as it has no ads (other than to buy Cricket's other nice products) to manipulate the children into liking potentially unhealthy things. Ana loves to see what Max & Kate are upto in each issue. Molly & Emmet - well, she can take it or leave it, but, the song in each book has to be mastered somehow... D can read Sheet Music, so, he sings it the first few times so Ana can learn the song, and for people like me, they have sample audio in their kids' website.

Each issue has stories and songs that reinforce a particular theme. The one that Ana loved a lot and learnt a lot from was the "Dragon" issue as I call it, where there was enough info about dragons for a 3-yr old to fantasize about.

Also, each issue has removable activity/crafts section easily doable by little ones with some supervision and help.

And recently, rather than me reading the words, Ana likes to interpret the graphics in the magazine and tell me what she thinks is going on. I think this is a great exercise in imagination, perception, originality and comprehension.

Of course, none of the kids' stuff can easily please all mommies, so, I do have some niggly little things I don't like about the magazine, but, since its benefits far outweight my objections, and since Ana seems to like poring over the magazine pages when it arrives, I think I'll leave it at that.