Bug Club is the brilliant new, award winning whole school reading programme from Pearson Education. Bug Club connects printed books with online ebooks so that children can read the printed book then log onto the school Bug Club site and read the books online, at school or at home. The banded books come in various formats and sizes covering different genres such as fiction, non fiction and comics. Many of the stories are based on popular characters from fiction and TV such as Ben 10 and Angelina Ballerina, which will be very appealing to children.

The ebooks have accompanying audio tracks and StoryPhones have been working in collaboration with Pearson to make these audio tracks available as stand alone MP3 audio stories via the BookShelf download store. We have  thoroughly enjoyed working with all the wonderful people at Pearson Education to make these titles available to our StoryPhones customers. These MP3 audio titles from The Bug Club reading programme are currently only available from the StoryPhones download store.

Now Available in the BookShelf Download Store

Bug Club Readers are available in sets (number of titles may vary), or as individual titles. Prices include a site license for use through out your school. Download our BookShelf Resources catalogue for more information.

You can list to a clip of Pete’s Peculiar Pet Shop The Very Smelly Dragon here.

Having created their first successful album ‘Happy Healthy Songs’, Melody Treehouse have now produced a delightful collection of songs to support the exploration of nature and minibeasts through song, movement and dance.

Wildlife Garden Songs are a collection of 15 songs designed to help practitioners teach children about the natural environment and the creatures who inhabit this world.

Once again, Melody Treehouse has created songs on unexpected, but very important themes. We really liked the song about a compost heap, passing on a very important environmental lesson. You can listen to a selection of songs here.

These songs can be used in conjunction with a garden or wildlife project and focus on the importance of the balance of nature. The songs also support other areas of learning including counting, positional words, physical development and PSED.  Melody Treehouse have also included instrumental versions of the songs for sing along sessions.

Songs are an ideal way of supporting children’s learning, and alongside their investigations and exloration you can use these songs to reinforce the names, habitats and movement of all the creatures they will find in the outdoor area. Woven throughout the songs are the use of concepts, number, and positional vocabulary, ideal for supporting the EYFS curriculum and beyond. Because all StoryPhones MP3 players have rechargeable batteries, these lovely songs make an ideal partner with our players.

Hilary James and Simon Mayor have over 20 years experience of writing and performing for children and are two of the UK’s leading songwriters and musicians They have worked as songwriters and musical directors for BBC TV and Radio on well known children’s programmes such as Play School, Playaway and The Song Tree. Simon is also one of the world’s leading mandolin players and composers and Hilary is an accomplished musician and has a voice described by BBC Radio 4 as ‘one Britain’s finest voices’.

Hilary and Simon’s amazing talent and skill have combined to create fine,  humorous songs for children of all ages. These songs are laugh out loud funny, with clever plays on words, story telling and brilliant music.

The songs also support many of the National Curriculum requirements for language and literacy and music and will support any creative curriculum activities.

We are delighted to have Hilary and Simon’s songs in our download store and  all five Musical Mystery Tour Albums and a  collection of gentle lullabies are now available to download. The songs cover a wide range of subjects from Harry the Hungry Horse to King Canute! The albums cost £6.00 each or you can purchase individual songs for 80p each, these prices include a site license for use in the whole of your school or nursery. All you need to do is enter our download store, and click on the ‘music’ or ’songs’ tag on the left hand panel. Why not  listen to  The Parrot Song, Harry the Hiccupping Horse or a gentle lullaby Lavender’s Blue!

We work very closely with our publishers and content providers to make their wide range of wonderful audio resources available to our customers. The Education Show gives us the opportunity to meet up with them and find out about new resources and let them know how schools and nurseries are using StoryPhones to listen to these stories, songs and audio resources. Here’s who we met this year.

Pearson Bug Club

We have the Pearson Rigby Star audio resources in our download store and we are very excited that we now have many titles from the award winning Bug Club Reading Programme available to download. StoryPhones customers have exclusive access to these MP3 audio stories.

Sticky Kids

Sticky Kids have some brilliant songs and they have recently released their latest album ready for the Olympics. Called ‘Go For Gold’, it will inspire your children to run and jump and leap for the Olympics and beyond.

Letterland

Letterland’s really colourful stand attracted lots of visitors and we found out more about their new ‘Fix-It Phonics’ resouces, helping to teach English to children around the world. We really liked Letterland’s award winning Cookbook, you can now eat your way through the alphabet! StoryPhones schools and nurseries can download ABC Stories, Beyond ABC Stories, Handwriting Songs and Alphabet Songs from our download store. You can also order the books to accompany the songs and stories.

Yellow Door

We have lots of resources created by Yellow Door available to download. The ‘Come Alive Stories’ are toe tapping and difficult not to sing along to. We have recently added new titles for the ‘Tune Into …’ series and the ‘Come Alive Phonics’ pack, a lovely, multi sensory way of introducing phonics.

And Finally …

We took our Beat Baby along to the Education Show to join us on our stand. Many  of Ros Bayley’s stories, raps and Beat Baby resources can be downloaded from the download store and Beat Baby always comes along with us.

Beat Baby is a delightful character and supports the resouces Ros Bayley has created to introduce and develop rhythm and steady beat in young children.

The Education Show this year was busy, lively and great fun. We met so many different teachers and practitioners, many of whom have been using StoryPhones since we first began in 2009. It’s always a wonderful opportunity to catch up with everyone and find out how they are using their StoryPhones systems. Here are just a few snippets!

“I introduce the audio story at the beginning of the week and we listen together on the Remote Console. The children then know that this is the audio story available to listen to on the Headsets” EYFS Teacher, Birmingham.

“We use our Little Listeners on our values wall. The children can write their ideas and thoughts about different feelings on the white boards and then they record these and listen back to them. I can hear the children listening to these thoughts when I’m sitting in my office” KS1 Teacher, Stourbridge.

“This was our best investment ever and a great helpline too” EYFS Teacher, Solihull

And our most important customers (who visited our stand with their parents) said …

“I have StoryPhones in my nursery and I like listening to a story about fish, three fish”

“I’ve got those at school, I can dance with them”

and finally …

A little visitor aged two spent ages using a Little Listener and dancing to songs. Everytime he choose a different song, he changed the way he danced! What a lovely way to develop rhythm and steady beat!

National Storytelling week is starting on Saturday 28th January. Listening to and telling stories is one of the most ancient ways of communicating and we all still do this today even in our modern 21st Century world. How many times have our children arrived at school or nursery desperate to tell you their story about their trip to the park, or their birthday party. We can be story tellers too, whether you are retelling a traditional tale or creating one of your own, the magic of listening draws children into the story and feeds their imagination. Storytelling is painting pictures with words.

If you are taking part in National Storytelling Week, you may like to record the stories your children tell so they can listen back to them and share them with their friends. If your are planning a story telling session, the National Storytelling Society have lots of ideas to help you. Their website has a list of activties and ideas and includes information about events taking place around the country. You can find out more at http://www.sfs.org.uk/nsw

To celebrate National Storytelling Week, you can download a free audio story of the Lambton Worm, a traditional tale from the North East of England. This story is available from the StoryPhones website.

Going Live on BETT Radio!

BETT 2012 was a busy, buzzy event. Apart from all of the exhibitors showing their latest technologies and resources there were lots of other activites also taking place including BETT Radio.

A wonderful advocate of radio in schools, Russell Prue has been broadcasting BETT Radio shows for the last few months, interviewing everyone involved in the world of educational ICT. Russell also broadcast BETT Radio live throughout the whole four days of the exhibition, using his Anderton Tiger Desktop. I had the excitement of being interviewed by Russell, live on BETT Radio on the Saturday morning. Radio is a wonderful medium for children and young people to use. For many children and young people, writing is a barrier to expressing their ideas and points of view. Radio removes this barrier and many children find their voice and are motivated to use language creatively via the spoken word. Russell’s enthusiasm for radio is boundless and his Anderton Tiger Desktop, portable school radio is really easy to use and the cheapest solution available for use in schools. If you’d like to know more about using radio equipment in your school, then visit Russell’s website at http://www.andertontiger.com/Desktop/. Watch out also for my blog about children’s radio programmes and where to find them.

Springland Nursery in Colchester ordered a StoryPhones system as part of the Every Child a Talker Project (ECAT). We asked Team Leader and ECAT coordinator for the nursery, Sarah Duffield, if she would tell us how the children reacted when their StoryPhones system arrived at the nursery. This is what Sarah said:

“Springlands Nursery is new to using StoryPhones. We were given ours through the ECAT project and I as the ECAT co-coordinator was very excited to receive a new piece of equipment. The children were very interested to discover what the box contained and there was lots of smiles and excitement as the contents were revealed. The children eagerly tried on the Headsets and started to walk around wearing them finding out what they could do with them.  We as a Nursery have many ideas for developing the ways we use StoryPhones and look forward to many years of our children benefiting from this valuable resource.”

Springlands Nursery and has twice been judged outstanding by Ofsted. They have also developed a software package for assessment, planning and recording called Easysolution 4 Nursery Education. If you would like to find out more about this, then please click here.

We are looking forward to hearing all about the different ways the staff and children at Springlands Nursery are using their StoryPhones system.

It’s National Poetry Day on Thursday. I love poetry, I enjoy the way poets play with words and rhyme to create a story, image or emotion. Quite a few years ago when I was a supply teacher I used to carry a poetry folder around with me. The children knew all about the folder and we always used to have a poetry session at some point in the day. After a while, certain poems became firm favourites and were always requested.  The most popular ones were about crocodiles and knickers (although not in the same poem!)

National Poetry Day is a celebration of poetry for all ages. You can visit the official website to find out more about the day and to download ideas and poems.

If you are looking for new poems The Children’s Poetry Archive is a brilliant site. It’s crammed with beautifully written poems. You can also listen to recordings of these poems read by the poets themselves. I particularly liked the poem ‘The Seashell’ beautifully read by the poet, James Berry and to my great delight, Spike Milligan reading ‘In The Land of The Bumbly Boo’. My nursery children loved this poem, their favourite part was shouting the last line of the poem. There’s a such a range of poems for different themes or you can search by form such as rhymes or limericks.

Poems For … also has children’s poems to download. You will need to register and once you’ve done this you can download the poems. The children’s poems are in the ‘poems for … all ages’ section. They print as posters and you can place them around your building, outside too.

Of course, children are poets themselves and you can record their poems to share with others.

Children’s Book Week is a campaign led by The Book Trust and is all about encouraging children to read for pleasure. Having started my reading journey with Enid Blyton and Ladybird books, I have had the privilege to teach and to raise my family in an era when children’s literature has gone from strength to strength. There is a huge and wonderful selection of books available and now through technology, these are easily accessible for all children. Children’s Book Week is the opportunity to curl up with a story and disappear into the world of imagination or information. So whether you and your children are enjoying stories by reading a book, listening to an audio story, reading an ebook or taking part in storytelling, we hope everyone has fun.

There is a lot of information on the web about Children’s Book Week. Here are some sites we have found which you may like to visit.

The Book Trust’s Children’s Book Week Campaign

You will find free resources to download including posters, ideas and more useful links.

Playing by the Book

Zoe Toft regularly blogs about children’s books. She has lots of good ideas about ways of encouraging children to love reading. Zoe has some very good suggestions for Children’s Book Week.

Storyworks

Mary Medlicott is a story teller and author of several books including ‘The Little Book of Story Telling’ published by A & C Black. Her website has some brilliant resources and ideas to help get your storytelling started. Mary has just started a new blog to coincide with Children’s Book Week with the aim of encouraging people to become storytellers themselves. Mary’s first blog is full of very good ideas and thoughts and I am looking forward to reading her new posts.