Reading to your children ….. free podcasts with stories

There is huge value in spending time sitting with your child and reading them a story.

No doubt there are studies and experiments, and scientific journals dedicated to just this area of parenting and whether a child that has been read to, fares better at school than a child that was not read to.

 

I enjoy reading to my children.  Sometimes I am reluctant to abandon my tv show to go and sit on their beds and read “Find Teddy Bear” or what ever the book is called.

Once I have read the story, I always feel good.  I get that little warm glow that you do when your realised you have done parenting well, or just a bit well.  I also enjoy, as the kids age, the changing levels at which they participate in the stories.

How they remember the “punch lines” or realise too quickly if you have tried to skip three pages. Or make the sounds of the character eating, or sleeping or falling.

Connor is too cool for me to read him a story.

I usually read stories to Georgia and Isabelle together.

There are times however when you can’t always read your child a book, but it would be nice to have some of the classic tales read to them, or have good podcasts on hand.

I know it is easier to pop on a DVD to pass the time, but the beauty of reading is that it creates the story in your child’s head, and your child’s imagination fills in the details — which often they can’t do with a DVD, because all the details are supplied.

I like what goes on in my head when someone tells me a story, or when I read a story.

My brain is able to imagine the tastes, the smells, the sights and the sounds.  My “hearing” of the story differs from everyone else’s, and that is the power of reading and books.

I read the Book Thief and it was one of those stories, the easily evokes the scenes and the characters in your head.  Everyone who I now who has read it, was equally enthralled with the story, and how their mind was able to sketch and colour in the characters.

I am always looking for audio stories that I can play to the kids either when we are driving, or maybe when they are tucked into my bed, and I prefer them not to watch a movie.

I found a few on this site – IONA.FM  this morning, and it includes

Alice in Wonderland

Playtime (BBC Learning)

Step inside a Story

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Secret Garden

There are also several Afrikaans podcasts, which are pretty good, and really useful if your child is learning Afrikaans at school and you have an accent like I do when you are trying to help them with their pronunciation.

There are 25 podcast channels for books for children at this stage.

If you were wondering where Gareth Cliff went to –  you can also find him here:

There are several podcasts – you may want to listen to : Clinical Sexologist Prof Elna McIntosh in studio chatting to Gareth on the Gareth Cliff Show would be an interesting one to start with.

 

Happy podcasting.

Posted by reluctantmom on July 23, 2014

https://reluctantmom.wordpress.com/2014/07/23/reading-to-your-children-free-podcasts-with-stories/