Spring 2022 I read an article from the Parent’s Review on Ambleside Online. The Parent’s Review was a magazine put together to help educators and parents (especially parents teaching their children at home) in the last few years of the 1800s and early 1900s. A lady named Charlotte Mason had started a school to train teachers. She herself had taught for many years and observed how children learn in a very natural way. Her educational philosophy has a lot of key points about nature study, habit training, etc. She wanted to teach children in such a way where they want to keep learning on their own (lifetime learners) and care about what they’re learning about. 

    The article that I was reading that particular day said: “We can only hope that someday an illustrated children’s newspaper may be founded, issued weekly if the demand did not justify a daily issue,” (The Teaching of Contemporary History, Vol 12, 1901, Pages 272-277). This idea struck my mind and since then (around Jan/Feb 2022) I thought about putting together an illustrated children’s newspaper. I looked online to see if there was something similar already out there. Although I found a few magazines that said they had “current news” for children, many of them looked more like regular children’s magazines instead of current news. They had articles introducing different animals or places to children, but not much of what’s actually going on in the world. I think it’s because often the news can be very depressing and confusing for children. I wanted to put something together that gives a few news articles in wording that children can understand with pictures and some “bonus” things like a crossword puzzle, “On the lookout” (finding pictures inside the bigger picture), and comics.