My daughter loves (and I don't just means loves, I mean LOVES) stories. Story books, long books with chapters, anything with words she loves. I used stories to wean her when she was little. She was three and I was done with nursing (some might think that's way to long, others not long enough, but it was what worked for us). It was easy to cut down to just nursing at bedtime and naptime to get her to sleep but beyond that it got complicated. So I started reading to her. I actually pulled a trick I learned when I use to babysit my siblings and picked up books that were children's books, books she would understand, but where still mostly way over her head so she would eventually get bored and fall asleep to the droning of my voice. We read all the Little House Books, all the Narnia books, and many, many others in a very short period of time. It worked wonderfully for our family and as she was my first I had all the time in the world to do this with her.
During her waking hours we read tons too. I would got to the library and come home with mountains of books that we would read every week and then return the next. She loved it and soaked up everything story she could get her hands on (or get someone to read to her).
We kept on reading loads until my second child started getting older and needing more attention (she was between 4-5 and my second would have been 6 mo to a year). I just didn't have the time or energy to read all the time to her. I started looking for books on disk at the library and found a few, but to be honest I wasn't super impressed with the selection. So I started looking online. I was thrilled when I found Librivox.org! Hundreds and thousands of audio books that are in the public domain (meaning they're free!). At first I wasn't entirely sure what to look for, but I searched for "children" under genre and found tons of books. Some we have liked much better then others. Librivox was a way that I could fulfill my daughters needs and love of stories, without needing to be the one reading with her all day long. (And I do mean all day. If I let her she could easily listen to stories all day and never stir from the couch.)
We still read, more now that my two youngest are interested in sitting and listening to stories, but my daughter still loves and finds comfort in the librivox stories she has come to know and love so well. And our whole family really enjoys them. There are times I'll be hanging laundry, she'll be listening to a story and looking at a book, my boys will be playing legos and my husband doing something else and we're all just enjoying to story together. There are many times my husband or I will start laughing at the antics of The Treasure Seekers or Anne's dreamy speeches in Anne of Green Gables.
So here are our favorite stories read by our favorite readers. There are many, many more, but these are the ones my daughter asks for over and over again. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
WARNING NOTE - These stories are old and and are full of old ideas and old language. My daughter on several occasions has pointed to someone at a store and said "That person looks so gay," or "That person has a queer look," thankfully out of earshot of the person. While she was using the word correctly for what she meant, the meaning has changed over the last 100 years. We were able to explain that some people would get upset hearing that because the it doesn't mean the same thing it did when the story was written and that she should use the words happy or strange. I've also been surprised occasionally to listen to a story I use to love (recently Peter Pan) and be rudely reminded of how much older I wish my kids were before listening to it. Violence, chauvinism and at one point talk of a "fairy orgy" (not something I'm willing to explain to an 8 year old), it was a bit shocking. So it is a good thing to check out these stories ahead a time to make sure you are ok with your kids listening to them. Many stories I have little problems with but am willing to overlook because the rest of the story is so good an it doesn't seem to effect my kids negatively.
During her waking hours we read tons too. I would got to the library and come home with mountains of books that we would read every week and then return the next. She loved it and soaked up everything story she could get her hands on (or get someone to read to her).
We kept on reading loads until my second child started getting older and needing more attention (she was between 4-5 and my second would have been 6 mo to a year). I just didn't have the time or energy to read all the time to her. I started looking for books on disk at the library and found a few, but to be honest I wasn't super impressed with the selection. So I started looking online. I was thrilled when I found Librivox.org! Hundreds and thousands of audio books that are in the public domain (meaning they're free!). At first I wasn't entirely sure what to look for, but I searched for "children" under genre and found tons of books. Some we have liked much better then others. Librivox was a way that I could fulfill my daughters needs and love of stories, without needing to be the one reading with her all day long. (And I do mean all day. If I let her she could easily listen to stories all day and never stir from the couch.)
We still read, more now that my two youngest are interested in sitting and listening to stories, but my daughter still loves and finds comfort in the librivox stories she has come to know and love so well. And our whole family really enjoys them. There are times I'll be hanging laundry, she'll be listening to a story and looking at a book, my boys will be playing legos and my husband doing something else and we're all just enjoying to story together. There are many times my husband or I will start laughing at the antics of The Treasure Seekers or Anne's dreamy speeches in Anne of Green Gables.
So here are our favorite stories read by our favorite readers. There are many, many more, but these are the ones my daughter asks for over and over again. I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!
- Little Women and Little Men by Louisa May Alcott
- The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L Frank Baum
- The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
- Anne of Green Gables and Anne of Avonlea by Lucy Maud Montgomery
- The Burgess Animal Book for Children and The Burgess Bird Book for Children (and anything else by Thornton W. Burgess)
- The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
- The Railway Children, Nine Unlikely Tales, The Story of the Treasure Seekers, The Wouldbegoods, all by E. (Edith) Nesbit
- Pollyanna by Eleanor H Porter
- Heidi by Johanna Spyri
- Raggedy Andy Stories and Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle
WARNING NOTE - These stories are old and and are full of old ideas and old language. My daughter on several occasions has pointed to someone at a store and said "That person looks so gay," or "That person has a queer look," thankfully out of earshot of the person. While she was using the word correctly for what she meant, the meaning has changed over the last 100 years. We were able to explain that some people would get upset hearing that because the it doesn't mean the same thing it did when the story was written and that she should use the words happy or strange. I've also been surprised occasionally to listen to a story I use to love (recently Peter Pan) and be rudely reminded of how much older I wish my kids were before listening to it. Violence, chauvinism and at one point talk of a "fairy orgy" (not something I'm willing to explain to an 8 year old), it was a bit shocking. So it is a good thing to check out these stories ahead a time to make sure you are ok with your kids listening to them. Many stories I have little problems with but am willing to overlook because the rest of the story is so good an it doesn't seem to effect my kids negatively.
More books (sorry if you have it already); only a few are audio books:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.magickeys.com/books/
The Bitaba Bird is pretty cool, it's got a lot of facts about geodes.