Give Your Kids Podcasts and Audiobooks With Pinna
The other day, when my son and I were driving around the city, he decided that he did not want to grow up.
“Then, when you are driving somewhere, you have to actually drive a car,” he complained. “You can’t do anything else. You can’t even play with toys! It’s so boring.”
“You can listen to podcasts,” I told him. “This is the perfect time to listen to podcasts.”
I’ve wanted to introduce him to podcasts for a long time. He’s the kind of kid who plays while watching TV, so he listens to the show rather than watches it in its entirety. Plus, he loves reading and creating his own comics, so storytelling in general is something he, like most kids, loves very much.
Since I didn’t know where to start – or what would get him involved – I decided to try out the 30-day free trial of Pinna , a new free audio streaming service for kids ages 3-8. Pinna has a pretty impressive variety of podcasts, audiobooks, and music. There are show interviews, TV mystery shows, game shows, and several books that have become favorites in our home for a long time, such as Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus , Curious George, and National Geographic’s Children’s Dinosaur Book . They even have several timely options, including books on presidents for Presidents Day and a selection of Black History Month titles.
So, on the day my son decided it wasn’t good to be an adult, I was armed and ready to offer a ton of entertainment to prove him wrong and get him excited with audio storytelling.
What are we doing
The first thing that we have chosen – a ” Grimm”, “Grimmer”, “Grimmest” , which presents the tales of Grimm, told the author Adam Gidvits in the class of precocious children. He begins each episode by explaining (in a somewhat eerie tone) that the stories he tells are “strange, sometimes rude and often frightening … in other words, dark. “
When my 8 year old son first heard the intro, he insisted that I turn it off. He was afraid it would be too scary. However, after 10 minutes, his curiosity got the better of him, and he asked to try again. Each story is rated on a scale from least scary (grimm) to most scary (darkest), so you kind of know what you’re getting yourself into.
We have not yet listened to the “darkest” episode, but “dark” and “dark” are not at all scary. When the kids on the show speak with predictions and reactions, it helps to interrupt the story and add a little humor; my son listened to four episodes voraciously (two in the car and two more when we got home).
Then we tried an interview called Good Sport, in which professional athletes talk about how they were as children. I honestly didn’t think he would do it, but he loves sports, so he wanted to try it. We started with Marty Bennett of the Green Bay Packers, who as a child told the story of chasing pigs on his grandparents’ farm. My son was silent as he listened, and it seemed to me that he was bored until he said, “I picture this as a caricature in my head.” It was exactly the stimulus for imagination that I had hoped for.
You can search Pinna’s content by age or category, and he likes to scroll through all the options. Most recently, he started listening to audiobooks; he spent half an hour last night listening to Captain Cowards . Others I suggest he try are Goosebumps: Night of the Living Mannequin and Hello! Fly Guy .
After 30 days of free trial, if you don’t want to spend $ 8 / month / $ 80 / year on a subscription (I’m currently discussing this issue too), you can still get free access to many of Pinna’s original content . podcasts such as Grimm, Grimmer, Grimmest , Science Show , The Unexplained Disappearance of Mars Patel and Molly and the Sugar Monster .
If you’d like to give it a try , it’s available for iOS now and the company informs me that it will be released to Android users on Tuesday. Either way, it was a great way to try out a lot of audio programming and get a feel for what you and your kids love.