Nature Friend Magazine
www.naturefriendmagazine.com
What are your children…your grandchildren being fed?
Stanley and Janice Brubaker began publishing Nature Friend magazine in 1983. Nature Friend was born out of a desire to encourage children to believe in God as their Creator and to seek out, recognize, and appreciate His handiwork.
Since Divine Creation is the first and foundational doctrine of Scripture, our children must be able to stand on it securely to withstand the undermining influences from our culture. Nature Friend has chosen to not be controversial or militantly confrontational about creation vs. evolution. We simply stand on the truth of God’s Word and present it as enjoyable fact while learning about the creatures God has created.
The first issue, produced in January 1983 by the Brubaker family, was small and went to a handful of subscribers. Today, more than twenty-five years later, Nature Friend is full size, and has gone to seventy-five countries.
Nature Friend is now being published by Kevin and Bethany Shank in Dayton, Virginia. When Kevin began freelance nature photography in 1985, he never suspected he would someday own Nature Friend, one of the first magazines he targeted with photographic submissions. Now we encourage you, our readers, to submit your stories, photos, art, puzzles, and poems.
We also now offer a Study Guide edition. The Study Guide is eight pages, and comes in the center spread of the magazine for those that subscribe to it. Exercises such as a crossword puzzle, acrostic, fill-in-the-blank, true and false, etc., are made up of questions that come from the content of the magazine. These help to reinforce learning from each issue, and they may be photocopied for multiple children to make use of.
The Study Guide also has two bonus features. One bonus feature teaches creative writing using a nature study as a springboard. The feature is titled, “A Study in Nature; a Lesson in Writing.” Learning creative writing is a blessing in itself, but for those that work these lessons they may have an added advantage when submitting stories to us for story contests.
“The Photo Critique” is the second bonus feature and teaches nature photography, as well as giving you opportunity to submit your photos for possible use in this feature. Nature photography is an enjoyable hobby for many children, and we want to encourage you along. Besides lessons on composition and learning to “see” photographs, we have even taught some in-depth techniques too. For example, the August 2009 issue taught how to photograph owls in flight catching prey. You can learn in about twenty-five minutes what took me nearly twenty-five years to learn. Here at Nature Friend we were able to get two photos within the first twenty-one minutes of trying, and several hundred over the next month. You can do this too.
Kevin and Bethany Shank, Editors
Nature Friend Magazine
4253 Woodcock Lane
Dayton, VA 22821
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