Greenburgh Public Library Blog

Podcasts for Growing Ears

With spring break coming up, many families will be hitting the road and making memories. You can always find a good audiobook to share on your trip, but did you know about the abundance of family-friendly podcasts available to you for free? Podcasts, whether they are a fictitious or fact-based, serialized (a novel-like format best started from the first episode) or stand-alone, engage families with compelling stories and build/reinforce vocabulary, improve reading skills, and even inspire empathy(!). They reduce screen time, and can go anywhere, but it can be challenging to find age-appropriate content and while many are free, they are supported by sponsors’ advertisements.

Below is a list of our favorite podcasts for children and families but check out Common Sense Media’s 2017 and 2018 roundup or the podcast directory over at Zooglobble (especially if you are looking for children’s podcasts in Mandarin, German, Norwegian, Swedish, Polish, or Hindi). If you need help finding and/or downloading them, check out our recent blog post, How to Listen to Podcasts.

Interested? Here are some our top podcast picks for our favorite little ears:

• Imaginations run wild without advertisements in Adam James’ The Storyteller Podcast Kid's Edition'. James’ magical children's stories are paced with music and sound effects. Great for children ages 4+.

• Familiar voices from the stage and screen tell carefully-selected folktales from around the world in 10 to 20 minutes in  Circle Round, an inclusive storytelling podcast from WBUR (Boston's NPR news station). Episodes are rich with music, delve into topics such as kindness, persistence and generosity and end with a gentle call to action. For kids ages 3 to 11.

• Looking for a fast-paced, fun-filled podcast about ethics? SHORT & CURLY, popular Australian podcast, gets kids and their families thinking about animals, technology, school, pop culture, the future and more. For Children ages 6 to 12.

• Innovative, family-friendly podcasts at Best Robot Ever house everything from serialized adventures, to field reports from a biologist, to a game show about fake news and more.