Our feature this week is from Tracey Weil, Chief Mom at Tales2Go, who shares her family’s experience with audio stories AND the real life story of how Tales2Go (audio stories for kids) got started. Her insights, from dedicated parent to successful entrepreneur, illustrate how gaps can be channeled into lively educational opportunities. Give a mom a challenge, and they give you back an entire mobile solution that is GOOD for your kids. Don’t you just love that?
Photo Credit: Marissa Rauch Photography
Years ago, a friend gave me a gift. It was a story CD by storyteller Jim Weiss. We first played it while schlepping the children somewhere in the car. It was full of fairytales and myths, and immediately my [then] little ones were entranced in the back seat, virtually put under a spell by Jim’s soothing voice and clever tales. We listened over and over and over until my children knew the stories by heart.
When our oldest started to read, he was struggling a bit. So I went to great lengths to get him excited about reading. We frequently read to him and books could be found on our kitchen table, beside his bedside, in the backseat of the car, and audio books were loaded into the CD players of our cars and in our home.
I tried not to miss an opportunity to feed his brain with age-appropriate literature.
While it was easy to find a wide selection of books, I found it challenging to get audio books. I jumped through hoops to find them Saturday at the library (time consuming and poor selection), at the bookstore (costly), and downloading them (actually I never really did figure out the downloading and syncing process: too pesky).
One day, I was looking at my iPhone and turned to my husband and said, “Why can’t I just get stories delivered to my phone? I always travel with my phone so I’d be able to play a story whenever and wherever. There’s got to be a way to do that!” And that was the beginning of Tales2Go, where kids can listen to a huge library of audio books and stories streamed on-demand to mom or dad’s iPhone (or iTouch/iPad).
Interestingly, my kids (now almost 10, 8 and 6) love listening to stories more than ever: in the car, at home during mealtime, at bathtime, and even before bed (after we’ve read to them). Instead of a shorter tale (which they still enjoy from time to time), we now listen to multi-hour books and series like Diary of a Wimpy Kid, American Girl or How To Train Your Dragon.
It turns out, kids of all ages (yes, including the kid in you) love to listen to a good story that is well told by a storyteller or professional narrator. And, of course, I feel great about letting them listen. The kids are entertained while building listening comprehension and learning new vocabulary words on the sly. Meanwhile, I’m secretly pleased their imaginations are being sparked and their brains are at work.
Try listening to a story with your kids sometime on a car trip or while waiting at the dentist’s office. I think you’ll find audio stories are a gift that keeps on giving.
My boys, ages 9 and 4 1/2, absolutely adore Tales2Go. I cannot count the hours they’ve spent enjoying stories (in the car, lying on the floor, walking around the house, over breakfast, in the tub, etc.). This app has really changed the way our family consumes media. We no longer put in a DVD when someone is bored, or it’s raining, or someone is sick. We play a story. The changes in my children are noticeable. We talk about new words they’ve learned while listening, we discuss aspects of the story (a long discussion over what it means to be a hero ensued after listening to How To Train Your Dragon), their “screen time” has gone down to almost zero. It is wonderful to have access to so many stories, so many choices, wherever you have your iPhone. I cannot recommend this app highly enough!
It would be wonderful if this was also available for Android, for those of us without i-products. How about it, Tracey? 🙂