Why Audio? What are the benefits of audio stories for kids?
We want our stories to help the world go a little bit slower and be a little bit kinder. This is why all our stories are audio-only.
Think about the characters from stories your parents read to you. Your imagination stitched their clothes, built their houses, and formed every expression on their faces. That's the magic of audio!
For a decade now we’ve been inviting families to observe their own children after audio story time. How do they behave? How do they interact? Compare that with their behavior after screen media time or video game time. Is there a difference? More often than not, parents report that their children are relaxed, as well as inspired to play and to be creative.
As you may know, when a child listens to a story — simply told, without the extra stimulation of sound effects or visual images on a screen — they become still, silent, and completely focused. Their focus, however, is not on the storyteller, but inward on the images of the story itself.
When humans hear stories, it’s not only the language center of our brains that is activated — it’s also all the other areas in our brain that we would use if we actually experienced the events of the story. (You can read more about this in an article from The New York Times.)This is equally true for children listening to audio stories. They “see” the wild horse, the determined young girl, the deep woods. They “hear” the sound of the wind, the call of the father, the crack of branches under hooves. They can even “smell” the pines and the woodland earth.
As the child listens and creates their own images, they consequently build a new map of neural pathways. This can have a profound impact on the complexity, versatility, and adaptability of their growing brains. This whole-brain experience makes audio stories (or stories read out loud) utterly nourishing. And, as Einstein proposed, that informs their intelligence:
"If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales." — Albert Einstein
Enjoy ten days of free unlimited listening (on us!), and experience it for yourself!
