Can anyone recommend a good site for read aloud books (books on tape)? Or a story hour? I am looking for something for my soon to be 2 year old to have a little independent quite time. I am also looking for these stories to not be mainstream character-based (i.e. Disney, Nickelodeon, Etc.). I have an iPod touch that I could stream them for her with toddler headphones so she won’t need access to a computer. I also would like it to be spoken word only. No images to go along with the story. Thanks for any help in advance! 
Which language are you interested in?
That´ll be English for me, thanks in advance, Skylark!
Oh yes! Skylark, to clarify - English, but any in Spanish or Polish would be great too!
OK, here are the ones that we like in English –
A Child’s Introduction to Mozart and Beethoven narrated by Robert Helpmann (http://www.amazon.com/HELPMANN-Introduction-Beethoven-Wonderland-RLP1449/dp/B00933H5B2/ref=sr_1_fkmr3_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1349732966&sr=8-3-fkmr3&keywords=A+Child’s+Introduction+to+Mozart+and+Beethoven+narrated+by+Robert+Helpmann)
and A Child’s Introduction to Orchestra from Golden Records
A Child’s Introduction to Ballet with Moira Shearer (Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty) from Riverside Wonderland – my kiddos love ballet, and we went to a few performances with them to the National Ballet Company Theater, have the ballet DVDs, that they watch a few times a week, so this was truly a win win for them.
A Child’s Introduction to Shakespeare narrated by Mary Douglas Dirks from Riverside Wonderland
Riverside Wonderland Record company also had a lot of classical fairy tales, as well as Telegeneral Let’s Pretend records and Mercury Storyteller records from 60th I think, we have not done those, because we do classical literature and fairytales in Russian now. But thought to mention.
For a bit older ones I would say Tale Spinners for Children records ( I think they also from 60th) will be really good, we only done a few, and they were a bit over their heads ( I have 2 and 3 year olds), but they liked the ones about composers. We were given Their composer series in Itunes format as a gift, but I just found a place where quite a large collection of these older records are posted for private use (not sure but they might be out of copyright already) in either case there is a large collection of Tale Spinners posted here: http://www.artsreformation.com/talespinners
And here on the same resource collection site I found other children’s vinyl records that I mentioned and we like, as well as some other ones that I have never seen before (gotta check them out!): http://www.artsreformation.com/records/
We got a couple before from ebay, but they are not easy to find, and then you have to convert them to mp3… :nowink: So this site looks like a treasure to me, I think it is that person’s private collection.
Here is another site with English children’s stories, copied from old records – http://www.kiddierecords.com/
http://storynory.com/ – this site has some classics, some original stories and some history based. We have not done much of it, excerpt for some Aesops Fables, they record everything themselves, use British accent, but what I did not like quite a few of the stories had a short advertisement in the beginning.
https://catalog.librivox.org/search.php?genre=Children – this site might have something you can use, but it is not easy to search, this is the site where volunteers create audio files from out of copyright books, public domain books. I never got around looking for things here, but always planning to check it out lol So if you find something you like, kindly share with us!
Another audio stories my children like:
The Story of the World: History for the Classical Child in audio format – it is really good and it is done in short stories so I can just chose story or two to play at one time, we do it a lot while driving
The Audio Bible for Children ( we have actually a couple of different versions, and we rotate them, if you are interested I will check the exact names)
We do a lot in Russian as well, most classical literature we do in Russian at the moment.
Hope these help, I am looking forward to hear what others use as well!
Spanish–
I am not familiar with this site, but I have a friend that is using it – Classic Fairy Tales in Spanish – http://www.codyscuentos.com/
Skylark - Mega karma to you for those links!
Thank you, Seastar
If anyone has any other audio resources, please do share, as we use audio a lot in our education process :yes:
It is actually amazingly effective, as kids listen to audios about composers, math, physics, etc, and then when we are out and about they always talk about it and ask questions :yes:
Thank you Skylark! Karma to you!!!
Great list Skylark!
Here is another site we like for free audiobooks and ebooks:
Kerileanne99,
Thank you for bringing up the BOOKS SHOULD BE FREE site. I totally forgot about it and to be honest I was under impression that there were just PDFs there.
Just got the MP3 version of Poems every child should know! Evangeline would be thrilled, because we read from that boom together often, and she is familiar with many poems, so having it as an audio during our car rides would be simply awesome! K2Y!
Awesome! Thanks Skylark and Kerileanne99 for the resources you use! Any others out there? Looks like there might be a few others with this same question…
There is also www.more.starfall.com , you have to pay $35/ year to access to their read aloud books though. I think it’s definitely worth it. We’ve been reading their books almost everyday since my LO was 14 mos and we still haven’t finished all of them yet (he’s 24 mos now), of course we read his favorites several times. There are books for different levels, from easy readers with clickable words to advanced picture books with clickable sentences.
Thank you very much for the links!!
Please, the audio books have the texts as well, I suppose. Where I can find then in the link booksshould be free? I cannot find them. Thanks in advance.
Thank you for the links!
I would also loved to know what books to look for . I am familiar with some but I would loved to hear your suggestions for a 3 year old girl.
You can subscribe (free) to the www.homeschoolfreebie.wholesomechildhood.com, besides having very interesting posts for homeschoolers every day, quite often they post links to audio downloads, although it´s usually for a bit older children.
If you are interested in some spiritual input, look through www.mywonderstudio.com, besides a lot of very nice devotional material for the younger lot, they have a few audio Bible stories posted, e.g. http://www.mywonderstudio.com/level-2/2012/10/19/an-audio-bible-adventure-winning-a-battle-with-lifted-hands.html
Hope this helps a bit.