Want to Trade your audiobook collection?

Early Learning Teaching Your Child to Read
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Okay, so first off!
Thank you so much everybody for all the kind and thoughtful emails I have received from BK friends worried that we were injured in the explosion of the fertilizer plant in Texas! I was truly touched by the thoughtfulness of BK family, and will answer your individual emails as soon as possible- it occured less than 15 miles from us, we were terrified by the explosion even at this distance, but were unharmed thankfully. I can’t imagine the horror and sorrow of those even closer…

Now on to audiobooks! Alex, as always, is primarily devoted to math and science…but we do continue to regulary advance with reading, and she adores audiobooks at quiet time and bedtime. I have amassed quite a collection of classic childrens audiobooks and newer audio literature…I am hoping to find one or two EL moms out there willing to make a somewhat comparable investment (or divestment :biggrin: ) to exchange my collection for theirs when they are ready for new ones! I have exchanged hardcopies of one or two in the past, but this is quite a bit of work for a single audiobook:(
If your kiddo enjoys audiobooks and you think this might be a proposition for you, please let me know…I am attaching a basic list of our audiocollection, but this was literally off the cuff and I know there is much more!

Please PM me if you are interested or even just want to recommend non-US-based literature :slight_smile:

AudioBooks List:
A Bear Called Paddington- Michael Bond, 2 CD
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz- L. Frank Baum, 4 CD
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass- Lewis Carroll, 6 CD
Just So Stories- Rudyard Kipling, 1 CD

The Wind in the Willows- Kenneth Grahame, 6 CD
Peter Pan- J.M. Barrie, 5 CD
The Secret Garden- Frances Hodgson Burnett, 7 CD
D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths-Ingri and Edgar Parin D’Aulaire, 4 CD
Charlotte’s Web- E.B. White, 3 CD
The Cat in the Hat and other Dr. Seuss Favorites, 11 Books, 2 CDs
Green Eggs and Ham and other Dr. Seuss Favorites, 9 Books, 2 CDs
Pippi Longstocking- Astrid Lindgren, 3 CDs
The Complete Chronicles of Narnia- C.S. Lewis, 19 CDs
Beatrix Potter Collection-Beatrix Potter, 6 CDs
Winnie the Pooh- A.A. Milne, 3 CDs
The House at Pooh Corner- A.A. Milne, 3 CDs
GreatHall Productions: Jim Weiss
Famously Funny
Tell Me a Story
Animal Tales (Aesop, Chaucer, Grimm)
Classic Fairy Stories, Junior Classics. 2 CDs
Great Inventors and their Inventions, 2 CDs
Great Scientists and their Discoveries, 2 CDs
The Twits- Roald Dahl, 1 CD
Matilda- Roald Dahl, 3 cds
George’s Marvellous Medicine- Roald Dahl, 2 cds
Danny and the Champion of the World- Roald Dahl, 3 cds
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory- Roald Dahl, 3 cds
Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator- Roald Dahl, 3 cds
The BFG- Roald Dahl, 3 cds
The Witches- Roald Dahl, 3 cds
James and the Giant Peach- Roald Dahl, 2 cds
Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Enormous Crocodile, Esio Trot, The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me- Roald Dahl, 4 cds
The Jesus Storybook Bible collection, 6 CDs
Story of the World, Volume 1
Story of the World, Volume 2
Story of the World, Volume 3
Story of the World, Volume 4
Julia Donaldson collection, 5 CDs
Lily’s Big Day and other Stories- Kevin Henkes, 2 CDs
Hairy Maclary collection and 11 stories- Lynley Dodd, 1 CD
Angelina Ballerina and other stories (11)- Katherine Holabird, 2 cds
Farmyard Tales- Stephen Cartwright
And numerous random collections for all sorts of literature! In addition, I have just ordered another huge shipment of similar books that are to arrive this week…

***Edited to add new additions/ others I remembered!!
Little House in the Big Woods
Little House on the Prairie- Laura Ingals Wilder
Tell Me A Story vol 1- Amy Friedman
Tell Me a Story vol 2: Animal Magic- Amy Friedman
(Timeless Folktales from around the world)
Amelia Bedalia collection
Shel Silverstein collection
My Father’s Dragon (3 stories) Ruth Stiles Gannett
James Herriot’s Treasury for Children: Warm and Joyful Tales by the author of All Creatures Great and Small
Magic Tree House Collection Books 1-8- Mary Pope Osborne
Magic Tree House Collection Books 9-16 Mary Pope Osborne
The Tale of Despereaux- Kate DiCamillo
Mr. Popper’s Penguins- Richard Atwater
Stuart Little- E.B White

I am very interested in favorite children’s lit from other countries, especially from the UK as Alex is a dual citizen. Enid Blyton would be a most welcome addition! We purchase the hard copies of the books at the same time as she really enjoys having both…I find it truly helps her confidence and endurance to read herself for a bit, and listen along when she burns out:)

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Wow! Your 3 year old will listen to stories of this length? My baby is 16 months and will wiggle to get away if I even pause to take a breath (with a 5 page board book)! Please share. How and when did you first introduce audio books?

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Corinne_
Alex started there as well! Keep plugging away, focusing on the input:) You won’t believe how fast it adds up!
We tend to read lots of books throughout the day, with lots of picture books as she loves to learn about literary concepts…picture books are the best for teaching things like set, plot, charachters, onomantopeia, assonance, consonance, parts of speech, punctuation, etc…Alex will now interupt to identify a palindrome, or whatever catches her fancy. She is allowed a pen or pencil to underline unfamiliar words in books for her vocabulary jar, and then draws one out per day to learn spelling, part of speech, etc… we play a game of using it correctly as many times as possible that day, and it is cemented in her mind.
So just continue to picture the long-term! it WILL come…\

Here is the most recent video I have of her reading…apologies if you saw it posted previously, but I am hoping it will give you that motivation to keep going and making it fun even when it seems like things are going nowhere:)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbKCzIVySRU&feature=player_detailpage

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I showed this video to James. And this is what he says. “I love her! Is she a princess?”
I have no idea how he became obsessed with princesses. But he told me one day that he is looking for a princess to court.

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Tiana is a princess! We call her princess all the time and she has a tiara! lol just in case Alex isn’t interested :slight_smile:
Keri I have read through your collection a couple of times now and well…I can’t think of anything you don’t already have! Your collection of Audios is exactly what I would have bought… Can you think of any you want but don’t have?
So pleased you are OK. I must have been under a rock, I didn’t hear the news until after your comment…

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Keri so glad to hear you are all safe and I hope you are all well too.
What a lovely video! A princess indeed :slight_smile:
I’m afraid I have nothing much to offer in exchange for your amazing collection. I will have to make do with poaching all your fabulous ideas and trying to replicate it instead!

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I think the Waco explosion was over shadowed by the Boston Bombing. I was a bad news week here.

Manda, James would be a good beau. He tells me that he will listen to his princess talk and take her for dates in daddy’s truck. He is always telling me I am so pretty too.
Oh and my husband married an older woman. :slight_smile:

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Oh I haven’t heard about Waco :ohmy: So glad you are all safe.

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I feel like I have definitely been under a rock. I just don’t know how you moms and dads do it. I feel as if I don’t know what’s going on in the world and STILL can’t keep up at home. (sigh) I am so happy you and your family are safe and well! Thanks for the lovely video or your daughter. I am just so impressed. And thanks for the useful tips and ideas!

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Korrale4kq-

It is truly hilarious that James asked if she was a princess, as Alex is truly DESPERATE for anything princess these days! I read her ZOG, by Julia Donaldson (Strong princess eschews being ‘rescued’ by a night in favor of becoming a princess/doctor who flies around the kingdom on the back of her dragon/ambulance) when she was bitten by the Disney Bug, and we now make up our own alternate EL adventures for hardworking/clever princesses lol

I finally gave up on insisting she cannot live in princess costumes…really. So we made a deal that she will wear proper clothes when we leave home and she is allowed to choose random princess attire to her heart’s content at home.
That being said, this is definitely an EL home. We took this picture a couple of weeks ago after a rain storm knocked down a huge branch! She is outside ‘being a princess scientist’ as she investigates a fallen branch in princess dress, tiara, Wellies, and her ‘lab coat’! Not to mention a worm in her hand :slight_smile:
I had to share it for James!

And Hey! Who says he can’t love princess Alex in the US and princess Tiana in Aussie land?!

@Manda- glad you like my collection! I am always on the lookout for new things, and I have a huge Wishlist for future audiobooks. I also just updated my original post with some new additions and others I didn’t mention prior. I would love to hear any ideas you have for literature based outside the US, we definitely need a bit mor diversity!
I just bought the Tell Me a Story sets by Amy Friedman that have traditional folk tales from around the world, and they are quite good. There is a third volume with stories of strong women from around the world that I have ordered, some more of the Naxos classics such as Shakespeare and Great Explorers…
I am still needing more E.B. White, things like Beverly Cleary Ramona books, etc…
We like to have the hard copy to go through at the same time, so it gets to be quite a large project!

@Corrine-
I forgot to mention that when I started audiobooks with Alex at about the age of your child, I did the Farmyard Tales set of 20 tales- Heather Amory, Stwphen Cartwright. The stories are very short, very cute illustrations, with a ‘spot the duck hiding’ feature on every page to keep their attention. The book comes with the cd, so after we read the stories more than a few times, I began to play the cd at bedtime and nap time/quiet time. Her stamina increased quite quickly and they cannot hear the story if they are noisy :biggrin:
It really is amazing how well she has learned to listen and pick up details, and it really has taught her visualization techniques…

@Lelask, Izp, everyone-
Thanks so much for your kind thoughts and comments regarding both our safety and Alex’s video :slight_smile:

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Hello gd am. Wow you have a big collection. I don’t have anything to exchange.may I know how much your selling your collection? Hope it is a bargain. I’m sure it will help me.thanks n keep in touch.God Bless u

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I was going to mention how much I love the Jim Weiss stories. I see you have a few. :slight_smile:

And I can’t wait to show James the princess scientist! He will love it. I plan to make him a lab coat so he can play Dr.

James’ grown up aspirations have changed over the last month or so. He wanted to be a Doctor or Optometrist, then a teacher firefighter, (apparent that is someone who teaches firefighters), then he wanted to be a bird and lastly when he grows up he wants to be a table. That led us to talk about inanimate and animate objects.

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well i am the one under the rock here :slight_smile: my husband keeps telling me , you have to listen to the news and elarn what is happening in the wolrd . i am so busy at home , my brain spins all the time with all needed to be done :frowning: thank God you are alright keri , i was thinking of you lately , couldn’t get on brillkids so i didn’t read posts , was wondering how are you doing and princess Alex .
I too have good collection of audio but no where near what you got . I recently got tthe Shakespeare collection on sale just because my tina is in love with Shakespeare , i have audio but most still on cds and i have to work on putting them in my itune library then it will be easy to share .oh my tina loves audio , after an hour of before bed reading together she won’t sleep unless i put for her an audio book to listen to . I am sad that my little boy is not hooked to audio like his sister , the thing is i don’t have much for the early age so probably those will get him hooked :slight_smile:
I have been busy plannign my trip to belgium with isa , so i see now i missed so much of the forum posts .
in one fo your posts you mentions GCSC for Alex , would you consider an english online schooling or American ?? and why ??
xxx
viv

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Keri,

I do not know if you have Child Introduction to Orchestra and then the whole series really – Child’s Introduction to Ballet, their composers series. We do a lot of listening in the car and my LOs loved these. The only funny thing is that in Child introduction to Nutcracker, they omitted the Mouse King and his army, and substituted it with toy animals :nowink: , my 2 year old was so-o furious about it lol

Anyways just thought to mention these as they are a good listening material

Of course, we love the Story of the World (I had to skip a couple of spots).

We do a lot of “carschooling” (love how we coin new terms and definitions on the Forum :yes: ), as our drives are usually pretty long, but we got so much out of audio books and other educational MP3 – started slow, but our collection really grew and now driving somewhere is one of the kids favourite activities, they got to listen to their audio books and songs :slight_smile:

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Sorry not to hijack this thread, I found a nice link to lots of records as mp3s.
Instead of purchasing, maybe you’d like to download them?

http://www.artsreformation.com/records/

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Those are great!

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I was curious as to just how my kids would respond to listening to chapter books on audio. We don’t use audio much as they don’t like to read along with the text and I was primarily aiming to teach them to read. In learning to read, without the words the audio isn’t much use. Anyway now that they can all read, the girls very well and Jaykob well enough he can have a year off school :biggrin: I figured it can’t hurt to try. So I took off to the local library and WOW what a collection! My library has LOADS of audio books for kids. My library is one of 6 linked libraries and it had 3 rows of audio books! I had no idea they would be so popular!
Most were CD but a couple were still tape ( who still has a tape player?) they even had some available in MP3 download versions!
Anyway to test out we trapped an Enid Blyton famous 5 story, a silly short poems audio and a " best of" picture books from Margaret Wild. Also to make sure the experiment is a success I grabbed the Hairy Mcleary collection. I know my kids will love that one. I am hoping that they get hooked on this and I can use audio recordings to enhance their listening skills, memory retention and extend their vocabulary and sentence
structure memory bank. The theory being the more quality sentences they hear the more quality sentences they can reproduce ( written and verbally)
I will be hunting for older style, high level vocabulary books read to good quality audio if anyone want to recommend any that would be great!

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I want Enid! I have no idea why she is unheard of here in the US.

I used to have a bunch of audioin my old hard drive before it broke… :frowning:
I need to utilizing my library to check out some audio books.

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Lol it’s the broken hard drive that is driving me crazy! Still I am getting pretty good at data recovery now…wouldn’t do it for a living though!
There was a fair bit of famous five stuff, I shall see if its any good.
I played some poetry before school today over breakfast and shoes time. The kids were pretty receptive to it but not that patient. So I think we will be doing short spurts. Hubby hated it. So short spurts when he isn’t home! lol

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Keri do you know this site?

http://www.youtube.com/user/CCProseKids