Reading Gives Us Someplace To Go When We Have To Stay Where We Are

In order to stay sane while being quarantined at home with kids, everyone needs some (or a lot) help and support. 

It is easy to say ‘just have fun, but much harder to do it without a glass of wine here and there ;). I do understand, as I am in the same shoes. Right now I am “having fun” staying home with a 10-year-old (going on 17) and an 8-year-old (‘I will not eat that’) boys that fight each other all the time. And a 3-year-old princess that creates projects without ever putting anything away. 

 

Reading is always our number one source to go to, to cope with cabin fever. It gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

Don’t get me wrong. My kids are not speeding readers, and the two younger ones most of the time ‘read’ pictures in the books 🙂 But we love books and I sure hope that one day, our children will love them as much as we do. To accomplish that, we read books to them every day since they were born. We have hundreds of books at home and we visit the local library at least once a week. Let me correct myself we were before the situation with Coronavirus exploded…

 

While some parents are able to spend plenty of time reading with their children, others for all different reasons may not be as lucky … but don’t you worry there is plenty of resources to help with that. 

I have noticed that lately Facebook has been deleting links to online resources that other moms started to share to help each other out. Weird I know. Despite that fact, I “kept them safe” and would like to make them available for you at all times.

Here is a list of free online resources to create a bookworm out of your child. 

Audiobooks

There are fantastic audiobooks available to kids and adults. Audio books provide educational benefits for all students, not just those with learning disabilities, second-language learners, struggling or non-readers. Audiobooks show good interpretive reading and teach listening. They introduce children to books above their reading level teaching them new vocabulary, dialects, and accents.

Please don’t think that audiobooks are the only way to read books. And absolutely don’t use them to replace reading. However, they are a great way to spice up a child’s world of imagination.

 

Here are some places you can find online books and audiobooks:

https://librivox.org/

http://www.loyalbooks.com/

https://www.storylineonline.net/

Books read to kids

 

“What you cannot imagine, you cannot do. Now imagine Astronauts on the Space Station reading stories to and conducting science experiments for the children of Earth as the world rotates below. Imagine no more…it’s Story Time from Space!”

 

Online libraries

After that, all books at home are read from page to page, and there is no access to the local library, you can always reach to online libraries:

• The Open Library offers millions of books that you have the option of reading or/and listening to for free.

• Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks.

• You can now download over 300,000 books from the NYPL

• Read Print is a free online library that provides thousands of free online books for students, teachers, and classic enthusiasts.

• The American Libraries collection includes material contributed from across the United States

• The Online Books Page is a website that facilitates access to books that are freely readable over the Internet.

• Classic Reader offers thousands of free classic books, poems, plays, and short stories from a wide range of authors spanning several centuries.

• Fiction.us is a great place to find free online novels.

For more online libraries you should check out Epubor’s post “20 Best Free Online Libraries”