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.

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.

The RSPB run The Big Garden Birdwatch every year in January. Running parallel to this is The Big Schools Birdwatch which takes place between January 21st and February 1st. All ages can get involved, all you need to do is choose an hour between the two dates to observe and record the birds visiting your outdoor area or garden.

The RSPB’s  website provides some great free resources to support The Big School Birdwatch, including photos, stories and creative activities. There’s more information on their website.

If you would like to make the most of your StoryPhones MP3 players to engage your children in The Big School Bird watch, here’s a few ideas…

Bird Sound Lotto Game

The RSPB provides information about five common garden birds: Robin, Blackbird, House Sparrow, Chaffinch and Blue Tit. You can download images for these birds from the RSPB website to create a lotto game. You will also need some sound effects to accompany this game and you can download free bird song sound effects from several sound effects download sites. I wrote about these in a previous blog and if you follow this link you will find all the information you need.

Who Am I? Game

Make up some clues and play a ‘Who Am I Game?’. You can then record these clues and set up the game as an independent activity. If you visit the Early Birds section of the RSPB website, you will find some ready made clues for you to record. Pictures can also be downloaded to accompany this game.

Bird Sounds

Once your children are familiar with the bird names and bird songs, play a sound guessing game with out the picture resources.

Sound Discussion

Listen carefully to a bird song and discuss its features. It’s an ideal way not only for your children to practice their listening skills but also to introduce and use vocabulary related to sound such as loud and quiet, high and low, fast and slow. Ask your children to describe the sounds they hear in their own words.

Imagination Time

Sound can be wonderful stimulus for the imagination. Create a play list of bird song and upload this onto the Headsets, Remote Console or Little Listener and start the bird songs playing in the creative area along side the paper, pencils, crayons etc. Stand back and wait and see what the results will be!

Record your observations.

Children can keep track of the birds they see in the garden in a variety of ways, and as an alternative, their comments and observations could be to recorded. Set the recorder on the Remote Console or Little Listener running at the observation point, close enough to record your children (you may have to experiment with the distance first). Your children’s comments and observations can be recorded, listened back to, and revisited for reflection and discussion. If you are going to record your children, you should let them know you are going to do this before you start.

Barefoot Books offer children a bright, colourful world of stories, rhymes, sing-along songs, and dance-along dances. Children’s imaginations can wander through a world of traditional tales and new stories written especially for Barefoot Books and bounce along to songs and rhymes. These lovely stories and rhymes are a delight to share, read and listen along too.

At the heart of all Barefoot Books is the love of traditional oral story telling which is reflected in the audio stories which accompany their books. Many of the stories draw on traditional tales from around the world, using words, music and song to give children a sense of the rich, diverse world they are growing up in.

We are thrilled to announce the arrival of 36 Barefoot Books titles into our download store. If you own a StoryPhones MP3 audio system or Little Listener, you can now download a treasure trove of audio stories from Barefoot Books!

Your children can listen to traditional tales such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Gigantic Turnip or enjoy stories from around the world. There is a huge selection of sing along stories to join in with and new stories to explore. Download prices start from £2.99 and include permission for use throughout your school, nursery or setting on your StoryPhones systems and players.

Stories from Usborne Books have been delighting children for years and we’re pleased to announce that we have now added 53 new audio titles from this wonderful Children’s Publisher of the Year 2012.

Farmyard Tales

Usborne Books have a reputation for publishing engaging stories for children of all ages and the Farmyard Tales series is no exception. Set on Appletree Farm, Mrs Boot, Poppy and Sam introduce children to a delightful range of quirky animal characters. These audio stories are beautifully narrated with sound effects adding to the listening experience and bring these stories and characters alive. Each audio story only lasts a few minutes making them ideal for younger children still  developing their active listening skills. Your children will want to listen time and time again, and the characters of Appletree Farm will become firm favorites. All 20 titles are now available in the download store, priced at £2.00 each.

Young Reading Series

The Young Reading Series audio books feature traditional tales, new stories and carefully written shortened versions of classic children’s stories. Suitable for older children, these stories introduce children to longer stories and chapter books.

Young Reading audio stories contain two readings: a dramatic listen-along version with music, sound effects and superbly narrated, and a read-along version, with a page-turn prompts, for the child to listen to while following the story in the book. All 33 titles are available in the download, priced £5.00 each.

Series One titles contain several short stories or one story divided into chapters.

Series Two titles mostly contain a single story divided into chapters.

Series Three titles are single stories with more complex plots. The audio stories are divided into chapters.

You can find out more about all of these titles and to listen to clips on our download store. Click on the blue world button at the bottom of your StoryPhones software to enter the BookShelf download store. Every download includes a site license for you to listen to the story throughout your setting.

Starshine Music provides high quality songs and musicals for all year round and we’ve just added three sets of their beautiful Christmas songs to our download store. Starshine songs are written, arranged and edited by experienced teachers to inspire and motivate children and our StoryPhones users can now join over 13,000 schools around the UK  already singing and enjoying Starshine’s music. Each downloadable content set is priced at £5.99 and includes 5 songs, lyric sheets and a site license for your setting. Perfect songs for Early Years and Key Stages 1 and 2.

If you would like to know more about Starshine Music, you can visit their website here.

Different styles of music can have a profound effect on the mood and behaviour of babies and young children.

Ami Tomake is an exquisite set of tracks composed especially with babies and young children in mind and based on the melody of an ancient traditional Bengali lullaby.

Award winning composer, Steve Luck has written Ami Tomake in accordance with current research into the effect that music has on the human body. Slow tempos can actually alter the brainwaves, promoting a calm, meditative state which in turn slows the breathing and heart rate.

Steve has produced two versions of Ami Tomake. The first track has vocals which translate as ‘I love you dear baby’ and the soothing lullaby vocal melody is accompanied by lush orchestral strings, harp and solo flute. The tempo matches that of the resting human heart rate and the music is arranged in a gently lilting ¾ time signature. The orchestration was chosen to provide natural sounding instruments which most closely resemble some of the sounds a baby hears in the womb. The track features sublime vocals from acclaimed singers Eloise Hodder and Lesley Roley.

The second track, ‘The Ami Tomake Suite’ has been produced in response to demand for a purely instrumental version of the original composition. It features the beautiful flute work of Tom Lovatt, more to the fore playing the melody of the lullaby as well as an extended arrangement containing new musical material not included in the original Ami Tomake.

Ami Tomake relaxation music is ideal for babies and children when you want to create a time of quiet, calm and stillness and perfect for settling babies and little ones at nap time.

We are delighted that this lovely, gentle music is now available for our StoryPhones settings to buy from our BookShelf download store. You can listen here to a clip of Ami Tomake here.

Ami Tomake relaxation music with vocals: download cost £10.00

Ami Tomake Suite, instrumental relaxation music: download cost £10.00

Ami Tomake Delux Edition including vocal and instrumental version: download cost £16.00

Don’t forget your purchase includes a site license giving you permission to play Ami Tomake throughout your setting on your StoryPhones system!

We have added 5 new titles by the wonderful storyteller and author, Neil Griffiths. Neil’s stories have an appealing quality and humour which are a delight to share with children or to listen to as an audio book.

Neil narrates all of his stories and with Red Robin books has added extra tracks to his audio stories. Your children can now take part in listening games and quizzes and hear how Neil finds his ideas for all his stories.

New titles include:

Ringo the Flamingo
Fatou, Fetch the Water
Florence Was No Ordinary Fairy
There’s a Spider in the Bath
Sam’s Sack From Santa

Eleanor Johnson recently contributed an article to the Innovate My School website where she describes her experience of sharing one of Neil’s story’s, ‘Albert’s Tuneful Trunk’ with a group of young children in the Early Years Foundation Stage. You can read her article here.

Audio stories from Red Robin Books cost between £3.49 and £4.49, you can also order hard copies of the books to accompany the audio stories.

Little Tiger Press are renowned for creating appealing stories with beautifully recorded accompanying audio stories. We have now added 5 new titles to the download store including:

The Very Noisy Night
Shaggy Dog and the Terrible Itch
Pooh, Is That You  Bertie?
Quiet!!
Smiley Shark

This means that there are now 15 Little Tiger Press titles to choose from in the StoryPhones download store. All of these audio downloads include two versions of the story. The listen along version has accompanying music and sound effects and is a brilliant way to enjoy a story together. The read along version includes page turn prompts and gives children an opportunity to listen independently with the book. The stories are read by celebrities such as Jamie Theakston and Helen Lederer.

You can also visit our Facebook page and read Eleanor Johnson’s post in May about using The Bad Tempered Ladybird audio story with a group of EYFS children.

All audio downloads cost £5.00 and include a listen along and read along version of the story. Price includes a site license for the story to be played through out your setting.