Another Christmas gift I would like to recommend for children who loves science is the Whizz Pop Bang science magazines (their bundles will make perfect gifts!).
We were sent the previous 2 issues for Abby to review, and 5 minutes into doing the experiments, we bought a whole year's subscription, plus a few back issues as well! It has been difficult finding a magazine that she likes, so we have been getting her books instead when Clay gets a magazine. I have finally got this sorted!
And honestly speaking, the Whizz Pop Bang magazine is even better than books, because there is plenty of interesting and fun science facts and news on top of the eye opening experiments the kids can do.
The Whizz Pop Bang science magazine is the UK's only science magazine suitable for children 6 to 11 years old, and they are linked to the national curriculum, so that's our KS1 and KS2 children covered.
Unlike other children magazines, Whizz Pop Bang is a proper science magazine, so you get the most updated science news with each issues, scientific facts, articles about what real scientists do, a bit of history (without history, there is no now, so it's good to know a bit of history, especially when it's fun and inspiring!), science activities and experiments that uses easy to find materials at home and schools, really interesting Q and As, and fun jokes too!
Each issue cost £3.75, £19.99 for 6 months prepay subscription, or £34.99 for a 12 months prepay subscription. Shipping is free to the UK addresses, and will ship Internationally too. There are 36 advertisement-free pages (good quality paper too), so that's 36 pages of science related materials.
The issues we were sent to review are
issue 15 - Colour Explosion and
issue 14 - Fossil Frenzy.
I love it that you can order back issues as well, so if you haven't subscribed before but an interesting topic is available, you can buy that straight from their website. They also have 12 and 6 back issue bundles that you can buy.
As soon as Abby received the magazines, the first thing she did was to look for the first experiment to do. It's kind of expected because that's what the kids do with all the other children magazine. The good news is that the experiments were really fun and she kept coming to me with "Ooo mummy look at this experiment I just did!". The bad news is that she has missed a lot more fun that she didn't realise, until I picked up the magazine and started reading the first page:
O.M.G it's scientific news! It's about things that we've heard on the news, but they made it more interesting to read. My husband said that the picture and words ratio was perfect haha. He dislikes walls of texts, and with children, you really can't have too much words.
They also used a different colour to highlight the snippet of each news, so for those who has even less patience to read everything, they can just read the headline and the coloured text first, before deciding if they want to read further.
Just this first page of news has put Whizz Pop Bang magazine into a different league. It is a proper science magazine, just like the adults one, but for kids!
After reading a couple of news, I've caught Abby's full attention, and she started fighting over the magazine to have a read herself! Even Clay was euw-ing at how Chameleons hunt for food and how their eyes work. I like the one stating that black is never 100% black and it still reflects an amount of light, and scientists in the UK has created the blackest black, which is still reflecting 0.035% of light, but is so black that it looks kind of weird (in the picture at least), and made a 3D statue look 2D!
We also learned from real scientists what they do in their job, including Bubble Science (she studies all sorts of bubbles, especially those in sea foams!) and how to find fossils!
Abby's favourite is still the experiments of course, like her dad she's more of a hands on person! She especially loves the colour experiments, and kept saying: "Look mummy! I'm bending air and light!".
We also had a laugh at the riddles towards the end of the magazine. I felt a tiny bit annoyed that I missed something in the riddle that's so obvious! We do like them and want more of it!
We had a look through the back issues and Abby picked 4 she's really interested in, including issue 3 - Blood-curdling Science. Why am I not surprised. They are already on their way, and we will be having lots of fun together this month with them! We will also be looking forward to next month's issue (our first from the 12 months subscription), which is hopefully Christmas related again, even though they have done one already last year.
