Back when I was a little tacker, I was enamoured with the Marshall Cavendish magazine Insight - technology and stuff. Admittedly, a lot of it went over my head, but it was still fun to read and helped fuel my imagination.
I dunno if there’s any equivalent today in print, but you might want to consider Make? Some of it will be beyond
your nephew’s current abilities, but it might fuel ongoing interests. 
There are apparently many spin-offs of Cricket:
Ages 9–14
Calliope — world history
Cobblestone (from 1980) — American history
Cricket (from 1973) — literary magazine
Dig — “archaeology – without all the dirt!”
Faces — children around the world: how they live
Muse — science and arts
Odyssey — “science as a vital link to daily life”
Ages 7–12
Iguana — Spanish-language variety
Ages 6–9
Ask — science, history, inventors, artists; “the most curious people”
Appleseeds — one cultural or historical topic each issue
Spider — literary magazine
Cricket used to be great. No idea about it now, or the other related mags.
I decided to get the Minecraft subscription renewed. I was pretty disturbed by the video game site he was visiting. It was definitely NOT a walled garden and the comments were really inappropriate for young kids, not to mention just how crappy the games in it were. And of course there was no way to control who was on it. I really miss Webkins; they served such a great niche for a safe space for young kids.
I spoke with my sister and she agreed that this was a good idea. So, I’m hoping that by giving him a better option he will not need to use the other game site.
Is your nephew familiar with the LEGO site? I did a write-up on the company a few years ago. Their website offers lots of stuff including games and message boards for kids to chat in. They also have a gallery where users can submit their LEGO creations which I thought was pretty neat.
They straight up ban adults from posting in most of the message boards as a preventive message against pedophiles, though I’m not sure what their vetting process is. Parents can make supervisory accounts so they can see everything their kids are posting, who they’re interacting with, and what parts of the website they’re allowed to go in. The message boards are also heavily moderated because the vast majority of posters are kids.
I’ll pass on the 411. I appreciate the recommendation.
Odyssey – that’s the astronomy magazine I got as a kid!
Odyssey debuted in 1979 with Nancy Mack as its founding editor and was published by AstroMedia Corp until it was acquired by Kalmbach Publishing. Kalmbach published the magazine from 1985 to 1991.[2] Odyssey focused on astronomy and featured a robot named Ulysses 4-11 as its mascot. Ulysses would answer questions from readers and had his own comic, “The Adventures of Ulysses,” , written by Bruce Algozin and Russ Chong, at the end of each issue until 1989.
Yep, that’s the one, I loved that Robot. Didn’t know they were associated with Cricket, which we also got. (Good magazine, and my wee ones currently have one or two of the younger spinoffs).
In 1991, Kalmbach sold Odyssey to Cobblestone Publishing, a division of Carus Publishing,
which has published the magazine since.
Ah, okay. 'Splains it.
The magazine expanded its focus to science in general and Ulysses was discontinued as a mascot.
Nooooooooooooo!!!
http://shop.cricketmedia.com/Odyssey-Magazine-Offer
Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Yeah, reading about Ulysses 4-11 makes me think that I read that magazine as well. It’s probably that space magazine I was trying to remember the title of.
I saw an 8 year old playing Goat Simulator a while ago. That wasn’t appropriate.
Well I would argue goat simulator is always going to be that way no matter what age the person playing which really is part of the fun.
Wow, we’re all about the nostalgia train today aren’t we?
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