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.

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.

Jolly Phonics is a structured, multi sensory approach to teaching reading and as part of the available resources, has a set of graded, decodeable reading books to support new readers.

We are thrilled that Jolly Learning have made the audio tracks to accompany these readers available for our customers through our download store, BookShelf.

The Jolly Readers are available in three sets, Red, Yellow and Green level. Each level consists of 18 books and includes stories about Inky, Snake and Bee, general fiction and non fiction. Each book is written with decodeable text and introduces tricky words as appropriate. As children progress through the levels, the sentences lengthen and more tricky words are introduced. All of these titles are now available to download from the BookShelf download store.

Each audio book is carefully recorded to make it easy for children to follow the text. Generous timing between each page gives children time to move from page to page, and page turns are clearly signaled. Children will easily follow the stories supporting their emerging reading skills and giving them confidence to become independent readers.

The audio stories are available to purchase and download in sets of 6 titles priced from £4.00 a set, or you can download a whole level of 18 tracks from £11.95. All audio titles include the site license for use throughout the school on your StoryPhones systems or MP3 players.

Why not listen to a sample from the Jolly Readers Red Level.

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 met Helen from a company called Infinite Edge at an Early Years Event in Sunderland recently and I was so impressed by their designs for outdoor spaces, trim trails and play structures. It was the clever combination of structure, colour, light and shade that caught my eye. I could just imagine a child standing under one of Helen and Sam’s canopies trying to catch colours in their hands as the sun created patterns through the canopies, climbing and exploring throught the logs and structures or trailing fingers in the water courses.

The combination of design, structure and colour inspires children to play and explore using the natural environment. Helen and her colleague, Sam, are particularly interested in the use of space and its potential for expanding learning opportunities. They use materials in new and unusual ways, landscaping playgrounds, providing interactive equipment, outdoor classrooms, story-telling areas, stages and much more. The children often have opportunities to be involved in the planning and building, helping to create their own outdoor spaces.

If you would like to know more about Infinite Edge and their beautiful outdoor spaces, you can visit their website here or email helen@infinite-edge.co.uk.

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.

“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!

Celebrate World Poetry Day by sharing a poem by reading or listening. There are lots of websites where you can download poems to read or listen along to. Alternativley, you and your children can write your own poem.

Resources For World Poetry Day

The Children’s Poetry Archive - created by Andrew Motion and Richard Carrington. There are hundreds of children’s poems and what’s really nice is that you can listen to them too! That’s what people have been doing with poetry for thousands of years!

Scottish Poetry Library - an archive of poems with a section dedicated to children’s poems.

Scholastic – This site has lots of resouces, many free to download. A good starting point if you and your children want to create your own poems. Once you’ve written your poems you can record them and create your own audio collection!

This is a very busy time of year for events, conferences and exhibitons. If you are attending any of the events below, please come along to meet us and find out more about StoryPhones. One thing we often notice is that once we start chatting, practitioners are soon telling us about how they could use StoryPhones in their classroom or nursery. It’s also a pleasure to catch up with our customers to hear how their children are using StoryPhones.

We always run a prize draw and have special show offers.

If you would like to meet us, here is the list of events we will be attending this term.

Reading Conference, Essex 27 February

Early Years Professional Day, Essex 27-28  Feb

EYFS Conference, Newcastle Upon Tyne 2-3  March

IAPS Conference, Cirencester 7-8  March

EYFS Conference, Shrewsbury 7  March

EYFS Event, Nottingham 7 March

EYFS Conference, Middlesbrough 9  March

Early Education Conference, Cumbria 10  March

The Education Show 15-17 March

EYFS ICT Event, Camden 23 March

EYFS Event, Manchester 27 March

StoryPhones has a free audio story for you to download and share with your children on World Book Day. The Four Dragons is a lovely tale from China and tells the story of how four dragons defy the Jade Emperor to help bring rain to a drought stricken land.

Download the audio story The Four Dragons.

Download the story and ideas The Four Dragons PDF.

You can find out more about World Book Day from their wonderful website. If you are based in Wales you might like to visit the World Book Day website for Wales.

However you choose to enjoy and share a book on World Book Day, have fun!