10 activities involving magazines

10 activities involving magazines

Why not recycle old magazines? After all, they are attractive for young children since they are packed with colors, pictures, and letters. Personally, I love magazines. Here are a few great ideas to put them to good use once they are read.

Reading corner
Set several magazines in your reading corner. Simply fill a bin with different types of magazines. Children will find them interesting, mainly because the pictures they contain differ from the illustrations they normally see in storybooks. Let's be honest. Children love magazines as much as adults. They will take pleasure in flipping through them repeatedly. Once the pages are crumpled, simply set them in your recycling bin.

Letter hunt
Older children will have fun searching for letters within the text. This activity is great for building pre-reading and pre-writing skills while having fun. Write the letters of the alphabet on a series of small construction paper squares. Give each child a magazine page containing larger letters. Have them pick a letter card and search for the corresponding letter. Once they find it, they can place a small sticker over the letter before picking another card. If you prefer, they can also trace or circle the letter with a colourful marker. You could also laminate certain magazine pages to create a reusable game children can explore with dry-erase markers.

Collages
Set a few magazines in your arts & crafts bin. Children will enjoy cutting various items out of the magazine pages and using them for unique collages. If you wish, you could also give children specific instructions to follow and execute.

Silly portrait
For this activity, you will need a picture of each child. If possible, enlarge the pictures so they will be easier to work with. Encourage children to cut various accessories (hats, earrings, etc.) and body parts out of magazines. Give each child his/her portrait and invite them to glue the magazine cut-outs on it to create a silly portrait.

Placemats
Could you use a few eco-friendly placemats? Find and laminate several interesting magazine pages. If you wish, invite each child to select the page he/she wishes to use for his/her placemat and let them add their own personal touch to it before laminating the placemats.

Cutting skill strips
Young children learn to cut by first cutting strips of paper measuring just a few centimetres. Cut magazine pages into strips and add them to your arts & crafts bin. Children will spontaneously use them to practice their cutting skills.

Flowers
Ideally, this activity must be done with older children. Trace circles on magazine pages and ask children to cut them out. Use a hole-punch to make a hole in each circle. Assemble several circles, overlapping the holes. Insert a fastener in the hole and fan out the circles to create colourful flowers.

Envelopes

Children love collecting stickers, scraps of paper, and tiny cut out pictures. Why not use recycled magazines to create envelopes to store them? Simply fold each magazine page as shown in the picture, making sure you keep a small tab at the top of each page. Glue both sides together. The tabs will be used to seal the envelopes.

Rolled paper strips
Cut magazine pages into several strips, each measuring just a few centimetres. Roll the strips of paper to create tiny rolls. Use a piece of adhesive tape to keep each roll from unraveling. Dip the tiny rolls in white glue and stick them on a piece of cardboard. You can encourage children to represent various designs or provide coloring pages and have them glue the tiny rolls along the contour of various shapes.

Hunt and seek
For this activity, you will need two copies of the same magazine (you may also use store flyers). Select a page and cut it into pieces, cutting around various items. Give children the cut items and invite them to find them in the uncut page.

Have fun!

Maude Dubé, Specialized educator