The BookShelf download store provides fantastic audio resources for children to listen to on their StoryPhones MP3 players. We have just added two great new titles from Starshine Music: a delightful story and songs about a very unusual scarecrow and lively songs involving three very curious characters!

Tattybogle

Tattybogle is a scarecrow with a head full of straw and cheerful thoughts. The rain is Tattybogle’s music and the wind is his dancing partner. One day, the wind blows too hard, and all that is left of Tattybogle is an old stick. But this is only the start of a glorious adventure.

This warm, delightful story written by Sandra Horn not only takes children on a journey through the seasons but also through Tattybogle’s changing fortunes. This is a story full of hope and change and made for sharing.

The audio story, narrated by Sandra Horn, is accompanied by catchy songs and dances produced by Starshine Music. Children can join Tattybogle as he dances in the wind and moves among the raindrops.

Tattybogle audio story and songs are now available from the BookShelf download store, price £8.98.

Buy the book!

You can also buy the accompanying book, available to order from the Bookshelf download store, price £7.49

Zippety Zappy Zee

Zippety the mouse, Zappy the zebra and Zee the bee are three delightful characters who introduce this set of lively new songs for young children. There are songs for occasions and themes, fast ones, slow ones, and dance and clap along one! Great songs for energetic, music loving children!

You can buy the download collection of 25 songs for £9.59.

Also available, the accompanying song book, price £10.98 and a set of finger puppets, price £6.60.

We are delighted to have Joanna Grace, SEN consultant writing for our blog. Joanna is passionate about the use of sensory stories and has just launched an exciting new project to develop more of these and bring the world of stories alive to children using all the senses. In Joanna’s guest blog below, she tells us more about the role sensory stories can play…

Sensory stories: The importance of sensory stimulation

Joanna Grace – SEN consultant.

We learn everything through our senses. The importance of knowing how to use them and of understanding what they tell us cannot be underestimated. Sensory stories provide a way of using sensory stimulation to support cognitive development and communication. They’re also a lot of fun!

A sensory story is usually quite short (under 10 sentences); it is told in words but also in experiences. We all know the adage that a picture speaks a thousand words, well an experience speaks so many more. Whilst these stories might be text short they are content rich. Children of all ages (including those 40 somethings sat around my dinner table) find them engaging. They can be used to help sustain children’s interest in a story. They also help children remember stories; I have used them in a nursery setting and found the children were able to retell the story very quickly if they used the sensory stimuli to support their memory. This is understandable when we think about how the brain works. When we are learning if we involve our senses more of our brain is involved, this can be as simple as using different colour felt tips when revising, or as elaborate as actually doing a task and getting our hands dirty! With more brain involved, more brain stands a chance of remembering. Some sensory experiences can be particularly powerful: smells can remind us of childhood and sounds can transport us to other places.

Telling a sensory story is easy: you just say the sentence and then share the accompanying stimuli. Doing this is great for building early literacy skills: listening, and turn taking. Our communication is based on turn taking: it’s your turn to speak and my turn to listen, now it’s my turn to speak and your turn to listen. An engaging resource like a sensory story can help children to learn this rhythm. Choosing great stimuli will help hold their attention. I use long sounds like a chime to accentuate this effect even more.

Sensory stories hold particular benefits for children with special needs and disabilities.

Sensory stories were originally developed for use with children with profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD). Children with PMLD may need support accessing sensory learning. Where other children may learn from running around the playground listening to the chatter of their peers, touching everything, sniffing the sniffs, seeing the sights, a child with PMLD needs support to access these experiences. Sensory stories can be a really fun way of providing that support.

Children with Autism, ADHD, Tourettes and other related conditions may experience problems processing sensory stimuli. For a child with ADHD their overreaction to stimuli could generate a hyper mood. For a child with Autism an overload of sensory stimuli could lead them to try and block it out, sometimes this can result in outbursts of aggression or self harming. Having the opportunity to experience different sensory stimuli in a safe and fun way can help these children learn to regulate their reactions, which in turn will make the world a nicer place for them to live in.

At StoryPhones we have a unique insight into the importance of sound and hearing. We know how much a child can benefit from listening. Add another four senses to this and the learning that is possible is dazzling. For this reason we have backed the Sensory Story Project, we hope you’ll be able to back it too, and if you do you may find yourself being rewarded with a sensory experience in the post!

If you’re interested in children’s listening and attention, audio stories, literacy and all things audio, then you should pay a visit to our Pinterest page. We regularly pin information, websites, articles and blogs to a variety of boards all covering the above subjects.

If you’d like to know about the benefits children gain from listening to audio books then take a look at our ‘Why Audio’ board.

If you’re interested in finding some websites offering good quality free audio resources then our ‘Audio Resources’ board will be helpful.

We post ideas about ways to use StoryPhones on our ‘Using StoryPhones’ board and you’ll find lots of information about all of the publishers and content providers we work with on our ‘Download Store’ Board.

You can visit our our Pinterest page at www.pinterest.com/storyphones and please feel free to repin anything you find interesting.

Much interest has been generated recently by the Bradshaw family’s attempt to spend the year only buying and using British products. The BBC have recently broadcast several articles about their project and the efforts this family are having to make to only buy British. Naturally, the Bradshaw family have initiated a lot of discussion about British made products and manufacture and we are very proud that StoryPhones has been developed, designed and manufactured all in the UK.

StoryPhones is the product of British creativity, design and manufacture. The original concept and prototypes were created by Simon and Eleanor Johnson in conjunction with a Newcastle upon Tyne design company, Octo Design. The bespoke electronics and firmware were designed by Simon Johnson, the StoryPhones software being developed to our specification by Internetware, again a North East company. The plastic mouldings for our MP3 players have always been produced by DS Moulds Ltd in Newton Aycliffe, County Durham and they worked with us from the beginning of the StoryPhones project to help with prototyping the plastics.

All of our MP3 Headsets, audio systems and Little Listener MP3 players are manufactured in Britain, originally in Lancaster and from 2010 by Opsol UK, a manufacturing company based in Cramlington, Northumberland. All of our packaging and printed materials are sourced from UK companies.

Not only is StoryPhones a British product but we are very pleased to be working with many leading British publishers and content providers.

If you’d like to know more about our British made MP3 players, you can visit our product pages or why not give us a call on 0845 652 0906.

Over the last few months we have been travelling round the country attending exhibitions and conferences. These events give us the opportunity to meet schools and nurseries using StoryPhones. It’s always good to meet everyone and hearing how they and the children are using their StoryPhones MP3 players. We know just how creative teachers and children can be with an open ended resource like StoryPhones and your comments prove this. Here’s what some schools and nurseries had to say…

“We bought StoryPhones in 2009 and they’re still going strong”

“We made binoculars in the workshop and put jungle sounds on the Headsets and went outside looking for the animals”

“We have eleven StoryPhones systems in our school and we use them all the time”

“We use our StoryPhones systems for group reading”

” Our children love StoryPhones, they find them so easy to use”

” Children learning to speak English love listening to tracks on the StoryPhones Headsets”

If you’d like to know more about how to use StoryPhones in your school or nursery you can visit our Products Page and download a case study or watch a video and you can also read our entries on our Resources Blog. There’s always someone here in the office to help too, phone us on 0845 652 0906.

Clickety Books create wonderfully humorous children’s stories based on eighteen quirky animal characters. The imaginative choice of words and rhymes encourage children to develop their knowledge of speech sounds, the essential building blocks for spoken communication and reading. These stories can be enjoyed by all children and used to support children with speech, language and early literacy difficulties.

Introduce your children to Jake the Achy Snake, Lucky the Plucky Duck and all their Clickety friends! These colourful characters, delightfully illustrated, form the basis of each story, full of rhyme, word play and alliteration. You can meet all the characters and find out more about the stories by watching these animated introductions on the Clickety Book website.

All of the stories are accompanied by beautifully produced audio stories brought to life by the brilliant narration of Rik Mayall, Roni Ancona and Catherine Tate. Listening to these audio stories not only breaths life into all the Clickety Book characters but also encourage children’s listening, attention and comprehension skills.

Clickety Books are the result of a of creative team of writers, illustrators and speech and language therapists. You can find our more about this award winning team here. No wonder Clickety Books were winners of a 2012 Gold Practical Pre-School Award and 2012 Silver Primary Teacher Award.

We are very pleased that our customers now can buy all nine Clickety Book audio titles from our download store and order the hard copies to accompany them.

We are out and about again this year attending a variety of exhibitions and conferences. If you are visiting any of these events, come along and say hello. You will be able to find out more about our StoryPhones MP3 systems and MP3 players and try them out for yourselves. We will be demonstrating our new 2GB audio systems, along with our loudspeaking, recording MP3 players. We’ll also have the latest news about the on line download store and  the latest audio stories and resources from new publishers. Eleanor Johnson, the creator of StoryPhones is usually on our stand and she always enjoys chatting about audio resources and explaining the different ways schools and nurseries are using their StoryPhones MP3 players.

You can see StoryPhones at:

Northumberland Early Years Conference, Newcastle Race Course – Friday 1st March 2013

Hertfordshire National ICT and Computer Science Festival, Hertfordshire Development Centre – Wednesday 6th March 2013

Newcastle Upon Tyne Early Years Conference, St James’ Park – Friday 8th March 2013

Sunderland Early Years Conference, Red House School – Saturday 9th March 2013

The National Primary Headteachers Conference, Stratford on Avon, Wednesday 22nd and 23rd May 2013

East Midlands Literacy Conference, Stoke Rochford Hall – Friday 7th June 2013

ICT and Inclusion: CALL Scotland, Edinburgh – Tuesday 18th June 2013

ICT and Inclusion: CALL Scotland, Glasgow – Wednesday 19th June 2013

West of England ICT Conference and Exhibition, Bristol – Thursday 27th June 2013

We’ll look forward to meeting everyone at these events.

On the 18th September we visited Cairellot Children’s Centre, at Bishopton in Renfrewshire to lead a StoryPhones training session. We were so lucky with the weather bearing in mind how awful it was just a week later and we had a glorious drive across the Cheviots and up through the borders of Scotland.

We have never visited Cairellot Children’s Centre before, however, we count Rosie Elliot and her team as old friends since we’ve been in touch with them for the last two years. Rosie has been a champion of StoryPhones since she bought a system several years ago and has provided several references and case studies for us. We were excited to meet everyone and to see StoryPhones in action.

It was a very good training session, we always try to run a relaxed, interactive session and encourage everyone to join in, ask questions and eat sweets! Cairellot’s training room was an ideal venue and Gillian kept us well organised with tea and coffee. I was so pleased when Linda, a senior practitioner at Cairellot agreed to come up and share their StoryPhones activities with our delegates. Linda and her team make great use of their system and encourage the children to incorporate the Headsets and loud speaking player into their play and activities. Linda was keen to empasise how easy to use the players were, how rugged they were and how the children’s storytelling, creativity and listening skills had impoved

Linda also agreed to talk about Cairellot’s experiences with StoryPhones and to let us record this. Here’s Linda’s interview Cairellot Interview September 2012

So… a big thank you to Rosie, Linda and Gillian and everyone at Cairellot.

The Education Show, Thursday 14th – Saturday 16th March: Stand E121

We are back at the Education Show at the NEC in Birmingham in March and we’re all looking forward to meeting everyone. It’s a great opportunity to meet new visitors on our stand, and there’s always a warm welcome for our customers too.

This year we are launching a 2GB StoryPhones audio system and a 2GB Little Listener loud speaking MP3 player. The BookShelf download store also goes from strength to strength and we now have titles to download from Usborne Books, BBC AudioGo and Barefoot Books.

We have a very good customer support system in place and are often in contact with schools and nurseries around the country who are using StoryPhones MP3 players everyday to support their children’s learning. These settings are using their MP3 players in so many creative ways from singing  outside to weekly guided reading sessions.

If you visit our stand, you will have the opportunity to see how our innovative MP3 audio systems and players work and have the chance to try them out for yourself. Eleanor Johnson, the creator of StoryPhones, will also be on the our stand. Eleanor  has a great interest in the way the regular use of audio resources and listening activities can benefit children’s learning and love of stories and she will be available to chat to through out the three days of the exhibition.

We’ll look forward to seeing you there.

BETT is one of the biggest educational ICT shows in the world. There are hundreds of exhibitors to visit and it’s well worth planning your visit in advance. To help you make the most of your visit and make sure you see some of the best suppliers and exhibitors at the show, you can download the BETT Trail App. The App provides information about these exhibitors, tells you all about their new products and has a competition to enter. As you are visiting the exhibitors, register this on your app and find out the answer to a simple question, there’ll be lots of friendly stand staff to help. To enter the prize draw, simply upload your score along with your details and you may win a prize.

Download the App here, pay a visit our stand, G245 and don’t forget to ask us the answer to our question!