We have a rest time everyday in PreK. After lunch the children get their mats and blankets and settle onto the floor for a 45 minute rest. Some sleep, but many do not. And (in my experience) there is nothing greater than audio stories to keep the ones who are wide awake entertained.
I use recordings by Jay O'Callahan often. My husband listened to his stories when he was young, and he really is a magical storyteller with wonderful original stories.
Our school library has a collection of Winnie the Pooh stories read by Jim Broadbent that we use also -- he does all of the characters just right.
The kids love Peter and the Wolf, too... I've been meaning to pick up the David Bowie version.
You have to change things up sometimes, though -- the same stories can get a little repetitive, right? So I was happy to have stumbled across StoryNory while searching for an audio reading of The Owl and The Pussycat by Edward Lear. I ended up downloading quite a few stories that we'll be trying out next week at rest time.
Do you have rest time? How do you feel about "making" kids rest?
Thank you so much for this link! We use audiobooks, both for rest time, and to provide to parents to use at home with their children, to support language acquisition.
ReplyDeleteWe go to the library often and take out books on cd, but we've pretty much gone through everything available. I am so excited about trying out some of these new ones.
Thank you!