Online Story books from Oxford Owl (tablet-friendly eBooks)

I came across a mention of Oxford Owl website from a beautiful blog, Teaching ideas, that I happen to follow in facebook. They have loads of resources for kids covering all aspects of school life and also fun out-of-school activities. When I checked out the site, I was pleasantly surprised by what I found!

If you have children in Primary School, you would only know too well about "The Oxford Reading Tree", "Magic Key" and the adventures of Biff, Chip, Kipper and their dog Floppy. They have helped children get on the reading ladder and build confidence in beautiful steps ( colour coded in schools as reading levels) for many many years and are quite tried, tested and trusted by schools all across UK. The books range from wordless ones to chapter books for confident, free readers and apart from the magic key stories, there are also non-fiction books and even classics retold for kids.

Oxford Owl (http://www.oxfordowl.co.uk/) has a collection of 250 eBooks from the Oxford Reading Tree series and also other picture books, all tablet-compatible and free to be enjoyed by children on-the-go! The children could read the books by themselves, or can turn on the audio to listen to while reading. The classics are all audio books (Black Beauty, The Secret Garden, Treasure Island, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, White Fang) and are really handy as stand-by for mums when they are too busy to read to kids, and also on long car journeys. The books are meant for ages 1+ to 11 and you'd be quite spoilt for choice as well. For a while, at least!

DS2 was very pleased to find a book there about the very first illustrator he knew from his nursery days - Alex Brychta, the illustrator of the Oxford Reading Tree series. It was interesting seeing his very first drawing (which was smashing, for a 9 year old!) and how he made his challenging journey from a little displaced boy to a talented and renowned illustrator that he is today.

The website also has help for parents on ways to assist the children who struggle with reading and many phonics resources as well.

All you need to do is to create a login credential so the children could access the books.

Check out the library here and enjoy!

Story Cove - Online stories

Some years back I was searching online for stories for my younger son. It was the time when he was entering into terrible twos and every meal would need exquisite preparation. The meal in itself was just basic, it was the amount of toys and diversions and stories that needed to accompany the meal that needed all the preparation. Every diversion would not hold good for more than 3 mouthfuls, after which the tactics would need to be dramatically changed.

Back then, I never had the heart to get him into a high chair and simply let him stay there with his food doing whatever he wanted with it for as long as he wanted. Maybe it would have helped him, but I somehow thought that a Mother's feeding ( not even spoon, just hand) was a more natural way of lingering a bit more on the special bonding that forms during nursing. Well of course quite soon, around his third birthday, I stopped all the feeding, just promoted him to the table to sit with his brother and he picked up quickly and became independent immediately. Stories still remained a part of table routine for a little longer, though.

It was during one such frantic preparation search that I hit upon Story Cove.  It required a free registration which was a quick process and then I tried the very first one,  Anansi and the pot of beans with my boy. It became an instant hit. The jingles were catchy and the children loved it. The story was nicely told and the kids made me cook beans for days together! We then ventured deeper and realized all the stories were equally good. There was no violence, nothing hurting, it was completely safe and positive and with some learning in most of the stories as well. I remember sharing this site with friends and family back then, and everybody had something good to say about them!

The stories are mostly old folk tales from various continents retold in a simple way with added animation. Most of the stories are also accompanied by lesson plans and activities that have some good information about the animals featuring in the story etc. The stories are also available as books, which I am sure would be just as lovely. I checked out today and found out that it is also available for sale on ebay in UK. But the children have outgrown these stories, so I guess I'll never have the chance of seeing these books!

If you have children aged between 2 and 5 or even 6, Story cove is certainly a site to try. If you, like me, have kids who ask you to just tell them a story ( not read, not show, just tell), you could prepare yourself quite well with these :o). It was a welcome break for me, my boys always want me to make up "Pillayar Murugan Adventures" on the go. There's only so much an Enid Blyton book could do in terms of helping in cooking up an adventure in 5 mins, so in between such imagined adventures, Story Cove tales served as welcome substitutes and the kids would love listening to them, particularly Anansi stories.

Happy reading and story-telling!