Parenting blogger, Lauren of Belle du Brighton talks to us about Storytime. A stunning magazine for children, with plenty of pretty pictures and no adverts!
Storytime Magazine is a joy for me to read to Athena, as many of the stories bring back childhood memories of my parents reading to me, and the first books I read myself! The stories are short enough to keep her attention, with gorgeous imagery to accompany each one, perfect for a pre-bedtime cuddle and wind down!
Each issue has more than 50 pages of content, and best of all no adverts! None at all, what a rarity! It's very welcome though because kids are very susceptible to advertising from a fairly early age, so no need to quickly turn any pages to avoid temptation or pestering from the kids!
The stories that are included range from fairy tales to classic and adventure stories, and there are also accompanying downloads available on the official Storytime website. The downloads are educational but fun, and are linked to the stories in each issue. Masks so that you can use for story related role play, and counters to help teach your child numbers are just some of the examples!
Full colour artwork features throughout, from a variety of artists so that there is amazing variation. At the moment Athena is too little to read herself so it's the pictures that she is drawn to and we'll spend time looking at all the illustrations on each page. I'll ask her to point out certain things or see how many she can find for example.
The great thing is that Storytime is a magazine that you'll definitely want to keep once you've read it, as the stories won't date and in the future when Athena is starting to read herself we can revisit them together, and then she can continue to read them once she's more competent.
The magazine is punctuated every so often with 'did you knows' and 'Act it outs' for example, which are prompts to encourage further investigation into the contents of the story elsewhere, which is a great idea for continuing learning!
Storytime works in conjunction with 'Read On Get On' which is a national campaign aiming to get all children reading well by the age of 11, although it saddens me that some children are unable to do so I think a campaign like this is really important and will help children whose parents or carers might not necessarily be able to help them keep up with their peers and enter the magical worlds that reading can help you enter!
I was a fairly early reader because both my parents are complete bookworms, and I am really hoping that starting early with Athena, reading her books and a bedtime story from Storytime will help her to be a bookworm too!
