When I was little my grandmother recorded stories on tape for us all the time. We still have some of them! She also sent some to my cousins who were overseas at the time. I think this is an awesome gift for little ones that live far away. They get to hear your voice on a consistent basis, acting out your love from thousands of miles away by reading stories to them!
A few years ago I took the same concept and made a set of books on CD for my nephews (age 2 and 3 at the time). I chose some favorite books from childhood and recorded myself and my husband reading them using my computer.
I used a free recording software called Audacity. It worked well. Their software was easy to use and easy to edit. I later went in and added a little chime sound for when the page should be turned. The software made it easy to dub the chime to my saved recording. Just Google “free sound effects” to find a wide array of choices. Finally I burned all the stories onto a cd, made a cute little cover for it and packaged cd and books together for my nephews.
We also recorded some fun family stories and songs and I added a few stories from my grandma and grandpa using the tapes they gave us as kids.
I should add that I am not a technological expert by any means. I have trouble with Facebook!
I guarantee that if I could do this, anyone could.It really wasn’t a difficult project to complete and I think it’s a great gift. I recently burned all those same stories onto a cd for J so it’s become a gift that keeps on giving! It’s been great to use on road trips and plane trips. It also works great while cooking dinner or entertaining toddler while busy with the baby.
Since all toddlers and preschoolers tend to love hearing themselves, a great addition to your audio assembly would be having them join you in reading key words, recite a poem or even read a simple book themselves.
Becca also blogs at Fun and Engaging Activities for Toddlers
This is such a great idea! Thank you. My DH is deployed and before he left we bought some recordable books at Hallmark for him to read to the kids but they were $30/each. This is a much cheaper version and you could do a lot more than just one book.
ReplyDeleteI love this too! I just wish I would have saved our old CD Walkmans. I need to search for some at garage sales!
ReplyDeleteCandis- you don't have to burn them onto CDs, save as a mp3 if you want, put it on your iPod. All the stories we made for my nephews a few years ago are now on j's iPod list.
ReplyDeleteMy mom did this for me (on cassette tapes back then, of course!) for when I stayed over at my grandparents' house. We still have the tapes (though nothing to play them on anymore), and I remember them clearly and can even hear my mom's voice in my head reading the stories. We live across the ocean from all my kids' grandparents, and I have wanted to do something like this but wasn't sure what our parents could manage, technology-wise, that we would be able to listen to on our end. Will pass on the link to them and hopefully they can do it for our girls. Thanks!
ReplyDeleteOh, I hope they'll take the time to do this! Finding those links to family are so great for the kids. Of course, I'm still working on my family to do this. Maybe next time we visit, I'll just have to prep it all (technology is not their forte; I must've taken after them!).
ReplyDeleteIf you could get your hands on a cassette player (maybe a friend has an old one?), you could transfer those cassettes of your mom's stories onto the computer. I did this with my grandparents stories. Or I know there are businesses that will transfer old cassettes/VHS (even 8 track and movie reels) to our modern day technology. I've used them to transfer old movies before.