"Outsourcing" Read Alouds ~ Favorite Audio Books/Day 9
Thursday, October 25, 2012 at 5:00AM
Welcome to Day 9 of The 10 Days of Reading Aloud.
A series about read alouds wouldn't be complete without a mention of audiobooks. I "outsource" reading aloud quite frequently. In fact, we use audiobooks at least 3-4 hours per week.
Where do we find audibooks?
What method do we use to listen to audibooks?
What are our favorite audibooks?
These are questions I hope to answer for your in today's post.
At the end of the post you'll have a chance to link up what you are reading this week for Read Aloud Thursday. Join my friend Amy (at Hope is the Word) as she hosts this weekly meme for read aloud devotees!
Where To Find Audiobooks
- First and foremost, THE LIBRARY! Our library has an extensive collection on CD, but I know now that many libraries offer .mp3 downloads from your home. How cool is that?
- Download the stories online from the company directly. We have listened to Jim Hodges audibooks and also Lamplighter audibooks through an easy .mp3 download.
- Audibooks for Your Kids - an iTunes app for .99 that offers lots of good books
- Free Classical Audiobooks - a fairly good selection here, and simple to click and listen
- Librivox - we have listened to one book from here and my kids thought the reading was a bit dry... you will just have to decide for yourself - it's FREE.
- Audible - a subscription service for audiobooks - If I had money to burn I would do this!
- Open Book Audio - sometimes there are free books here and the recordings are great!
- Amazon - I'm a HUGE fan of Amazon. With their Prime Membership you get so many advantages, and one of them is free shipping. I've recently invested in several of the Adventures in Odyssey Life Lessons stories.
I'm sure there are more sources for audibooks; these are just what I have discovered.
How We Listen to Audiobooks
- CD - Our van has a CD player and we have a CD player in the house. I know this way is getting to be a bit old fashioned, but the library audiobooks are all on CD, so there you go.
- iPhone/iTouch - I have been downloading some .mp3 files via iTunes or also just directly downloading them onto my iPhone or iTouch. I then plug this into my portable speaker system or the adapter in my van (My van is old and doesn't have an .mp3 jack!). Anyone can plug headphones in to listen this way, too. I'm finding that my middle schooler likes her space a lot more now -- giving her a good audio book with headphones gives her that space and keeps her learning, too.
- Computer - Last spring we listened to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer on my laptop. The kids would gather coloring and building supplies and I could listen and catch up on blog business at the same time.
Favorite Audiobooks
I'm sure you can add lots to my list. These are just the favorites I can remember! Some of these books have a link back to a post I wrote about the book, which shows you how we used the read aloud and the particular recording we used.
- Peter Pan
- Tom Sawyer
- Charlotte's Web
- The Bridge to Terabithia - In looking this book up I found the link for a free audio recording!
- The Hobbit
- Where The Sidewalk Ends - (Poetry counts as read alouds, too!)
- Magic Treehouse
- The Story of the World - Obtaining the CDs for The Story of The World is great. Jim Weiss does fabulous readings of the stories!
- Any Jim Weiss audio recordings - Visit Greathall Productions to purchase.
- Adventures in Odyssey - an all time family favorite
- Lamplighter Theater - We just finished Teddy's Button and I'm blown away by these books!
Again, I could probably add more, but these are the highlights!
What are you reading aloud this week? Please join the linky below... all I ask is that you leave a link back to this post or to Amy's post and/or use the Read Aloud Thursday graphic on your blog. We want to encourage reading aloud to our children!!
This post is a part of the iHomeschool Network's Homeschool Hopscotch... you can access many great blog series by clicking on the image below!
Reader Comments (7)
We've started checking out audio books from the library. Whenever we get into the car, my kids ask to listen to whatever is in the CD player. We've listed to all of the Ramona Quimby books. the entire series of American Girl Molly and we're currently listening to Mary Poppins. I'll probably have one running during our drive from SC to Texas in a couple of months.
My van is old, too, so I don't have the hook ups for the iPod. It would be a great resource if I did.
We love them for long car rides. We traveled from Florida to North Georgia over Labor Day and listened to all of the American Girl Felicity stories to prepare for a trip to Williamsburg, Virginia. On our way to Virginia a month later, we listened to Johnny Tremain, which made the drive seem so short and really got us excited about our trip. On the way back we listened The Penderwicks and Mary Poppins.
Around town we like the Magic Treehouse stories. The chapters are short so I feel like they work better for short trips where we are getting in and out of the van. We don't listen to them inside, they are a special treat for the car. We also do a lot of our Story of the World listening on the road.
We always have an audio book going in the car, although we've just about exhausted all the good ones from the library. Our favorites were the Little House series narrated by Cherry Jones. She is so expressive, plus there's an actual fiddle playing when Pa plays.
We listen to audio books all the time. Only in the car though. We listen to podcasts at home. I don't think we HAVEN'T had an audio book to listen to in 7 or 8 years. How do you listen to your iPhone/iPad in the car? I have tried a few things but nothing sounds good. My car is a 2004 and it doesn't have an MP3 plug either.
We listen to audiobooks 90% of the time when we're driving. We've found many treasures but there are 2 books I've officially "outsourced" to audiobooks -- Ramona Quimby and Little House. The readers of these series (Stockard Channing and Cherry Jones) are fabulous! I could never dare compete with their reading so I've never read these series aloud to my girls. Stockard Channing's voices are wonderful and my daughters love to imitate each of them. Cherry Jones make me feel like I live on the prairie.
We use audio books extensively in our house. We use them for some of our literature readings, since I can't read everything outloud! We use cd players and mp3 players since our main vehicle doesn't have a cd player.
Some of our favorite audio books are The Melendy Quartet by Elizabeth Enright and the Little Britches Series by Ralph Moody, The Mysterious Benedict Society Trenton Lee Stewart.
We prefer to get our audio from the library and use their Library 2 Go a lot. We also use Librivox, though the key to using that is finding the books that have one narrator who reads the whole book. Kara Shallenberg and Mark Smith are two narrators that do a great job.
I would love to link up for Read Aloud Thursday, but we are currently in the middle of our book, Swallowdale and hoping to have it done next week!
Audio books are such a wonderful choice, especially for my auditory learner! And while I'm familiar with some of the sources you mention (Jim Hodges audio books, for one - wonderful!), I had never heard about the iTunes app. Thanks so much for a great list!