Toybox
- The top selling magazine pre-school magazine on the market.
- Target audience 3-6 years.
- Features popular children’s TV characters.
- Circulation 92,400 (Jan- Jun 07)
- Readership 1,061,000 (Oct 03- Sept 04)
Balamory
- Most successful pre-school publication launch.
- Big hit with parents and children.
- Content- follows a day in Balamory
- Circulation 42,789 (Jan- Jun 2007)
- Readership 894,000 (Oct 03- Sept 04)
Bob the Builder
- Every issue you meet a new machine and see new places being built in Sunflower Valley.
- Content is full of stories, activities, and hints for children to work along in teams.
- They promote recycling.
- Circulation 68, 041 (Jan- Jun 07)
- Readership 2,118,000 (Oct 03- Sept 04)
CBeebies Weekly
- Includes CBeebies characters, puzzles, coloring, songs and makes.
- Pages reflect what’s been on TV that week.
- Front cover pulls off to be a reward chart.
- Circulation 69,834 (Jan- Jun07)
- Target audience 3-5 years.
Charlie and Lola
- Arts and crafts magazine.
- Issued monthly with free craft kit and stickers
- Circulation 67,984 (Jan-Jun 07)
Fifi and the flowertots
- Target audience 3-5 years.
- Includes activity pages, cooking, coloring, dressing up, nature trails.
- Includes notes to parents to encourage parent participation.
- Circulation 36,715 (Jan-Jun 07)
Tweenies
- Follows stories of Milo, Bella, Jake and Fizz.
- Includes stories, bright pictures, songs, games, role play and make it activities.
- Sales to date are in excess of 12 million copies.
- Circulation 38, 721 (Jan- Jun 07)
- Readership 2,428,000 (Oct 03- Sept 04)
Underground Ernie
- Full of stories, puzzles, coloring in, ideas to make things.
- Free gift with every issue.
- Circulation 38,259 (Jan- Jun 07)
I choose to look at the Tweenies website closer to see how they have made the website child friendly. The home page is very colourful and has flashing stars that highlight the characters that stand centre of the screen. The characters are stood around a wheel that has different options of activities the children can choose to interact with. When you put the arrow on a different picture on the wheel it gets highlighted and flashes with appropriate pictures to the activity (e.g musical notes for music time) a character says what the activity the child has chosen and the activity flashes up visually written therefore it helps practice reading and listening. I noticed that there was repetition of words throughout the web page to help the children get familiar with certain words in order to recognise them later on for example the icons on the home page are “music time”, “story time” with each activity choice ending in “time”, the stories and songs also use certain words repetitively in order for the children to recognise them.
This website has interactive games, songs and dances where they use moving images and step by step pictures to keep the audiences attention.
I also found a option on the website that was targeted to the parents attention that went to a link that said the games on the website were also adapted for children with special needs or learning difficulties which I thought was a great idea.
The site also used the voice of the characters from the show so the children feel comfortable using the website and deter the attention away from the fact they could be learning new things from the website.
I looked at the CITV webpage which when I logged on it went straight to an advert of a new programme which I had to press to skip to get onto the website. This has been purposely done to target the user’s attention to want to watch this programme.
The home page has moving images, boxes with comments children have sent in running across them, advertisement pop ups that have links to other pages, colourful adverts with times the children’s programmes start on which channels.
I really liked how they used pictures of CITV characters in the menu to act a links to information about the programmes. It a simple way to direct children around the site.
At the top of the page there are more links- watch it, create it, say it, get it, play it, win it that links to TV listings, things to make and do, how to contact CITV, how to get CITV backgrounds, games and competitions. Whenever you click on one of the links only the middle panel of the page changes while the rest of the format of the screen stays the same, the contents changes but the adverts around it stay stationary.
I looked at the CBeebies website which again was very colourful and well organised. The menu of activities is situated down the left side of the screen which when you drew the arrow towards it a appropriate CBeebie animation appears to clearly indicate what the activity you have chosen to click on e.g. stories and rhymes the animation is reading a book. I think this is a great idea to help guide the children around the site if they have difficulties reading.
The site has a search engine too to help them direct them around the website. It also has three fixed links at the bottom of the page with large titles and pictures, these links are on the menu but this helps them stand out and draws the audiences attention to them more.
At the top of the page there is the main attractive feature, a slide show of colourful still pictures with persuasive tag lines such as “help Gordon with his gardening” to persuade the children to click on the link. The image changes after a few seconds with a CBeebie animation bouncing on the screen.
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