As the summer winds down, I know that many people use the last few weeks of summer for family vacations. It’s the season for long car drives.
Most kids have their own devices to keep them entertained on this trips. However, it is also a great time to for your family to listen to audio books.
Our family hasn’t taken a road trip in a while but when we do, my husband and I have found that audio books for kids hold our interest as well. They are light, fun, and the good stories are actually good. And if you doze off, (not if you’re the driver obviously) when you wake up, you can usually pick up on the storyline without too much trouble.
Here are some of the books on tape we have enjoyed:
The Great Brain (Great Brain, Book 1)
Ramona the Pest (Ramona Quimby (Pb))
The Penderwicks: A Summer Tale of Four Sisters, Two Rabbits, and a Very Interesting Boy
Mr. Popper’s Penguins (Enhanced Edition)
Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing (Fudge)
Little House On The Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Henry Huggins, by Beverly Cleary
The Pepins and Their Problems, by Polly Horvath
Anything about Junie B. Jones, by Barbara Parks
We tried to listen to some classics but they were a no go:
The last time I also got LingualFun, the French edition because the blurb on the package promised that we would learn French in no time. I was hoping my family would be fluent in French by the time we arrived in New York so that I could impress my cosmopolitan cousins with my kids jo’ie de vi’vre and sophistication. At any rate, my children were not on board with this idea. No one was interested in learning a new language! My kids were fine with English and the Hebrew that they know. They do not want to expand their horizons and they obviously don’t care about their Mother’s bragging rights. Wouldn’t it be nice if I can tell all my friends that my kids are trilingual? See, even though I am a parent educator, I am not immune to trophy parenting.
Perhaps next year they’ll pick up a third language? It is always important to keep hoping…
The words of this author reflect his/her own opinions and do not necessarily represent the official position of the Orthodox Union.