AD – This post is in collaboration with Redan
Neve is a big fan of preschool magazines and on the rare occasion she comes into a supermarket with me; she always gravitates towards the magazine aisle and begs me to buy one. When it comes to preschool magazines however, some are significantly better than others! I always look to buy preschool magazines that not only feature familiar characters from her favourite toys or TV programmes, but are also educational too!
We recently learned that Redan have launched a brand new educational Hey Duggee magazine and with Neve being a big fan of the show, this seemed ideal!
About the Redan Fun to Learn Hey Duggee Magazine
Aimed at kids aged 3-5 years, the first edition is of the Hey Duggee Official Magazine 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
Each magazine comes with an 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
The magazine comes with a mix of activities including stickers, crafts, recipes and games, nurturing key learning skills and retelling a popular Hey Duggee story throughout the magazine.
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 e.g. Count, Colour, Write, Match, Sort and Find.
Educational Activities
Here are just a few of the educational activities we discovered in Issue 1 of the Redan Fun To Learn Hey Duggee official magazine:
- Colouring Pages – a giant page of Hey Duggee characters to colour and bring to life.
- Treasure Hunt – This fun interactive treasure hunt utilises the treasure chest that came with the magazine and its content and encourages a parent and child activity. Hide the contents around the room and then use Hot and Cold to say how close or far away you are from the treasure!
- Game – In this particular edition it was a follow the map board game. This involved creating a dice and counters from later pages in the magazine, and then rolling two dice and moving the correct number of spaces along the board. First player to reach the end wins!
- Counting – This element involved counting up how many different items there were in each group, sticking on the correct answers. Some involved searching for items among a picture.
- Letters – This section involved practicing letter writing and the formation and recognition of letters – in particular the letter T (capital and lower case)
- An adult and child activity – Im this edition, there was a Hey Duggee coin rubbing craft exercise for children and parents to create and make together. This particular activity helps children practise their sticking and cutting skills and even offers the ability to win a prize by sending in a photo of your finished creation.
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 Hey Duggee 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 fact that the toys on the cover (which are normally plastic and discarded pretty quickly) actually became useful as part of the tasks within the magazine.
Praise and Recognition
The Hey Duggee Official 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 tick 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 each stage of their workbook.
What we loved
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
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! That said, with this particular edition, the items on the cover were used e.g. the coins for coin rubbing, and the treasure chest for the game activity.
Overall, The X magazine 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 Hey Duggee Official magazine here.
