I love books! I have shelves full of books and bins full of books. I also have wonderful intentions of consistently reading aloud to my children daily. That doesn’t always happen. Or by the time we’re done homeschooling for the day– I’ve already read enough books that I don’t want to read aloud that one fun book. So over the past year I have been incorporating audio books into our weeks. I have found the benefits to be a perfect fit for our family.

Read Alouds with Audio Books

Our Favorite Audio Books

This year I wanted to introduce my children, ages 3, 5, 7, 9, and 14 to some children’s classics. We found that listening to audio books in the car was a fantastic use of time! This school year we have listened to the following stories while driving back and forth from co-op and soccer games:

• Anne of Green Gables
• Little House in the Big Woods
• A Wrinkle in Time
• The Secret Garden
• The Boxcar Children Books 1-6
• The Mysterious Benedict Society
• Snowflake Bentley

What I found was that it made our car rides more enjoyable, gave us something to discuss, and enabled the children to listen to a book they normally wouldn’t have picked out on their own to read.

Oh, and sometimes it piqued my curiosity! It was taking a little longer to go through The Mysterious Benedict Society just by listening on car rides. I wanted to know what was going to happen next! So I check out the book plus the sequels from the library and finished the whole set just to know the ending. 🙂

My teens even found audio books helpful! They listened to several classics while following along in the book for the lit. classes this year. Some of the books they read/listened to were:

Silas Marner
Wuthering Heights
The Scarlett Letter
Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Some Audible Favorites

We’ve listened to lots of audiobooks over the years. Some of them are awesome because of the narrator! Some that we have loved are:

• Echo by Pam Munoz Ryan
• The Mysterious Benedict Society  by Trenton Lee Stewart
• The Secret Keepers by Trenton Lee Stewart
• The Candy Shop War by Brandon Mull
• The War That Saved by Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley
• The Wilderking Trilogy by Jonathan Rogers
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio

Where to Find Audio Books

We happen to have a great library system that has a bunch of audio books to check out. We usually start there first. Other places to go are:

• Audible.com (afflink – membership site)
• LibriVox (free classics)
• Jim Hodges Audio Books (GA Henty, History Classics and more)
• Open Culture (free classics)
• Christian Audio (membership site but offers a free book each month)
• Lit2Go (free mp3 audios)

So read alouds using audio books isn’t cheating— it’s still read aloud time! 🙂 It’s a great way to utilize your time and allow the whole family to listen in. Do you use audio books at home? What has been your favorite audio book?