If you’ve ever lost your enthusiasm for reading the same story over and over, you’ll appreciate our guest Abbi’s discovery. She sent this tip to us as an alternative to letting YouTube read to your child.
I was first introduced to A Story Before Bed via the Nursery that I work for here in Dubai – Blossom. All the staff were asked to record a book and upload the recordings the Nursery Facebook account at 7pm each night to build a library of interactive bedtime stories for our parents.
This novel (heh) idea was such a great success I was inspired to use it with my own child. I found that, as with all toddlers, my son loves to see himself on video and so we changed the experience up a bit – we all did it together! He may not have smiled during the recording – it was bedtime after all, but he laughs non stop every time we play back it to him! Have a look at our family’s rendition of Itsy Bitsy Spider.
If you have a look at A Story Before Bed, you’ll see that there is a wide choice of books to choose from and they are updated on a regular basis. So far we have recorded just the free books but there are options to sign up for a paid account and it looks pretty fair. Right now, the paid family plan is about $10/month and you can re-record books as many times as you like.
You could record the same book in a variety of ways, get Grandparents to record one to show the kids, or record a bunch of books to be played to your little one if you have to go away on work for a few nights – they can still get a bedtime story from Mum or Dad – pretty cool I think! I hope everyone who has a look gets as much use and fun out of it as we have.
Abbi lives in Dubai with her amazing husband, David, and angelic two-year old, Charlie. We thank her for sharing this creative web service. I shoulda tried using it before going away for the weekend without my kids. Oops.
