NEW Adventures of Paddington Preschool Magazine REVIEW

AD – This post is in collaboration with Redan

Neve is big fan of Paddington; and having grown up with Paddington books as a child, I always love it when Neve finds an interest that mirrors the memories from my own childhood. With the new TV series on our screens and a recent range of Paddington educational preschool toys, the Paddington range is ever expanding. The latest edition to the Paddington fun is a fab new preschool magazine series – The Adventures of Paddington which is available monthly – the first edition is on sale now. We were sent a copy of the magazine to explore with Neve – here’s how we got on!

Educational and Fun

The Adventures of Paddington magazine is without a doubt, one of the most educational preschool magazines we have had to date, with loads of really fun yet clearly educational elements for children to explore and discover.

As seen on TV, each magazine comes with a 12 page educational workbook and a huge amount of stickers with a whole range of activities that support the Early Years Curriculum. The magazine is designed to make learning fun whilst supporting the development of children’s abilities in the 7 areas of learning including communication and language development, literacy development, physical development, mathematics, understanding the world, personal social and emotional development, expressive arts and design.

Clearly marked themes

The magazine is bright and colourful throughout with clearly marked themes at the top of the page so that parents know what each area is looking to teach / develop. The learning elements are marked with little stamps at the top of each page with titles such as Read, Make, Play and Count.

Educational Activities

Here are just a few of the educational activities we discovered in Issue 1 of The Adventures of Paddington:

• Stories to read together – these fun adventure filled stories are lovely to sit and read aloud together before bed. With a number of questions about the story to test their comprehension and understanding of the story; this is a really engaging way to help expand children’s vocabulary and recall.
• An adult and child activity – In this edition, there is a Paddington finger puppets exercise for children to create and make together. This particular activity helps children practise their sticking and cutting skills and even offers the ablity to win a prize by sending Paddington a photo of your finished creation.

• Balloon Maze – This fun balloon maze on the surface just looks like a puzzle, but actually helps little ones practice their pencil control and tracing of lines and letters.
• Game – In this particular edition it was sticker bingo. This involved rolling two dice and adding up the numbers before checking if the coordinating food item was on your shopping list. The first player to complete their shopping wins. Neve at 4 found some of the sums a bit tricky but we were able to work through them together. The competing element was really good fun and really Neve loved this.
• Counting – This element involved counting up how many items of each type of food there were on the page and choosing the appropriate sticker, helping to practice their number recognition and writing.
• Letters – This section involved practicing letter writing and the formation and recognition of letters.

Other areas included large poster pages to colouring in, puzzles such as find / spot the difference a Dot to Dot and a Drawing Activity which involved drawing a picture of Paddington himself in his duffel coat and hat.

The Simple but Helpful Additions

From simple “This Magazine Belongs To…” areas where children can practise writing their own name to simple questions to test their understanding e.g. “who is the tallest and who is the smallest?”, The Adventures of Paddington magazine has loads of interactive elements throughout as well as tips for parents on each activity page to help Mums, Dads and carers support their children and make the most of the tasks included.

I particularly love the ideas for children on how to be ‘Bear Kind’ that were dotted around the magazine. These were simple  hints and tips on nice things children can do to do for other people to spread love and kindness.

Praise and Recognition

The Adventures of Paddington magazine has a real focus on praise and recognition, helping to use positive reinforcement when children complete activities or learn something new. I really loved this. Neve (aged 4) is a huge fan of stickers and being told she’s done a good job. As such, she loved the certificate we could cut out and write her name on to show she had completed her learning!

The magazine has star stickers at the end of each section so that children can mark their work as complete, as well as larger stickers that they can ‘earn’ when they have completed their workbook and solved the mystery message.

What we LOVED about the Adventures of Paddington Magazine

Neve absolutely loved the variety of this magazine and didn’t get bored quickly – we worked through it together and completed most of the activities in two fairly long sessions together. This would be a great activity book for at a wedding or family meal where you need a child to sit still or keep entertained for a sustained period of time.

Neve loved the fact it was filled with characters she recognised, bright and colourful scenes and activities and the addition of the stickers was something that really appealed to her preferred method of learning.

I enjoyed the fact that it was really educational yet still included things like the games and puzzles which were a really fun and non obvious way of enhancing her knowledge.

What we would change

We weren’t necessarily a fan of the plastic toys on the cover as quite often these aren’t something that Neve would want to keep – however, in this particular edition, the coins and food shopping element of the theme were actually something that I think we would reuse and play with for some time.

I know that for many parents; the plastic toys will put them off what is otherwise a really great magazine. The good news is that you can subscribe to the monthly magazine at a discounted price and a plastic free option – this way you don’t get the toys with the magazine, but it doesn’t detract from the child’s enjoyment of the magazine!

Overall, The Adventures of Paddington is a fun, engaging and interactive magazine that preschoolers can enjoy both alone and with a carer and I would more than happily buy this for Neve again. You can learn more about the Adventures of Paddington magazine here.

*Disclosure – We were sent a copy of the magazine and compensated for our time however, as always, all thoughts and opinions are my own*