I grew up with a library of National Geographic magazines in my home, so it's only natural that my jr. pet sitters have a subscription to National Geographic Kids magazine (called National Geographic World back when I had a subscription). We love, love, love reading it together! We'll usually read an article or two after our nightly book-reading ritual so we can savor the magazine all month. Since we've been busy with summer activities and slackin' on the reading a wee bit, we were behind on the last issue. We noticed only a couple of days ago that a few of the articles have a new techy feature that blows my mind. There are now "digital extras" in the form of "bonus videos" that you can watch on your phone. No joke!

All I had to do was download the "free NG Kids Scanner" on my iPhone, scan the picture in question, and up popped a totally awesome video that showed footage of what was described in the article. How crazy cool is that?!

Totally simple instructions...

AND we just received the September issue in the mail today! And it has driving dogs. Enough said.

National Geographic Kids magazine was already awesome, but this adds another level of excitement. I'm happy to say that my littles are already really excited about reading, but this takes the magazine-reading experience to a whole new level. And I imagine it might entice children who don't enjoy reading to give it a try. And, again: driving dogs. Yes.