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!
