Do you want to improve your kid’s listening skills? Podcasts are the best option to to deal with your tween. What are the best podacsts for your tween? You will find more about the podcasts furtherin this article.
Podcasts are the audio files that help kids to learn new things. These days, podcast selection has become a challenge to the parents. Podcasts keep children less on the screens. The podcasts allow you to listen while doing some other thing. But, the tweens won’t be doing that. Podcasts pull your tweens out of the boring world.
This article discusses the best podcasts for tweens. It presents the benefits of listening to podcasts.
What Podcasts Do?
Podcasts make your tweens engage in some other activity while listening and stay away from social media. Podcasts contain exciting stories, fascinating facts, and lively sound effects to grab the kid’s interest. For a greater experience of podcasts, headphones or a set of speakers are enough. Podcasts can also be used in classrooms to make learning interesting.
How To Listen:
Initially, it will be daunting to enter the world of podcasts, the digital tools have made it easier to start listening.
Here are some popular apps for listening podcasts:
- Podcast addict: It is an app that allows you to search, manage, and listen to podcasts
- Spotify: It is an internet media service provider with a separate section for podcasts.
- Stitcher: It is a radio service that provides news information and podcasts.
- Castbox: It is a mobile app, serves as an audio platform for podcasts, radio channels, and audiobooks.
- Pocket Casts: It is one of the podcasts friendly app. Pocket Casts makes listening podcasts easier by maintaining the separate list for the podcasts that you have already started and the ones that you have downloaded but not started listening.
Pros and Cons of Podcasts for kids:
Podcasts on the positive side:
Here are the few benefits of listening podcasts for tweens
A. Boost Learning:
Podcasts play a prominent role in learning science, general knowledge, history, and fiction stories. Listening to the stories will help your tweens to build good vocabulary, and to become more empathetic.
B. Reduce Screen Time:
These days, many tweens spend timelessly with the screens. They engage their time in watching videos and playing games. Which may make them poor at the studies and less attachment with the parents. Tweens may encounter health problems like:
- Headaches
- Neck/shoulder pain
- Eyestrain
- Reduced attention span
Podcasts, on the other hand, will help to balance education, entertainment, and engagement, as podcasts do not require staring at screens for a long time.
C. Portability:
Podcasts can be played on a smart device and are very easy to carry wherever you go. Tweens can listen to them in the car while going on trips, on the bus, or in the classrooms or while walking along the road.
D. Cost Nothing:
Podcasts don’t ask for any subscriptions or download fees. They are available free of cost on the internet. Anyone with internet access can listen and download for free. Most of the podcatcher apps are also free.
E. Entertain Kids:
Podcasts are designed to entertain kids with music, jokes, and narrative stories. Some podcasts are designed in the form of episodes with an exciting ending that makes tweens to tune back in.
F. They are Conversations Instead of Stories:
Unlike audiobooks, most of the podcasts generally hold conversations between two or more individuals. Podcasts allow you to easily tune in and out of it.
G. Source of Subject:
Podcasts are not only for entertainment, but also for education. They make learning new things interesting and easy. Daily engagement with podcasts can help you to prepare for the next level of your career.
Podcasts on the Negative Side:
A. Play lots of adds:
Radio station use podcasts as platform to advertise their sellable inventory. Many podcasts run several ads either at the begining or at the end read by the podcast hosts.
- Can be confusing
- Lack in age appropriateness
15 Best Podcasts for Tweens:
The following are the top podcasts for tweens:
1. Harrypotter and the Sacred Text: Harry Potter and the sacred text is an audio podcast founded and hosted by Vanessa Zoltan and Casper Ter Kuile in which Harry Potter stories are read as a sacred text. Each episode of harry potter revolve around a central theme like vulnerability, friendship etc.
2. Pants on Fire: In the era of fake news, your tweens should be able to recognize between true and what is false. This is a game show which that puts kid’s in the driver’s seat and the adults on the hot seat. Each kid interview two persons, one is the expert in a particular topic, and the other is a liar. The show teaches kids on how to ask insightful questions in order to weigh the evidence before them.
3. Radio Lab: It was hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich. Radio lab focuses on the scientific and philosophical related topics. As some of the episodes feature strong language, it is the best option for mature listeners.
4. Stuff You Missed in History Class: This biweekly podcast from the HowStuffWorks team is a great platform for learning history. This podcast can make your tween as a history buff after few episodes.
5. KidNuz: Talking to the kids about the news is a challenge. This podcast helps you out to make your tweens aware news. Mom’s are the newsreaders. It offers kids friendly news for five minutes, five days a week followed by the quiz.
6. Brian On: It is a great platform offered by American Public Media for the kids who are interested in science. It is hosted each week by a kid scientist and a reporter from American Public Media.
7. Math Mutation: This podcast is designed for people of all the ages. Interesting and weird corners of mathematics are discussed, which your kid may not heard about in their school.
8. Six Minutes: Eleven years old Holiday lost her memory when she is pulled from icy waters of Alaska. She begins to develop incredibly and soon she discovers that she is not alone in this world. This podcast is developed by the award-winning creators of The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel and The Ghost of Jessica Majors.
9. Saturday Morning Cereal Bowl: It is a great platform for music lovers. This is a two hour DJ Radio show features new and old songs that kids love. It gives well-rounded musical experience by covering all category songs- high- energy rock, folk, mellower tunes, bilingual (English/Spanish).
10. Tumble: It is the best science podcast for kids and grownups. It tells stories about science discoveries with the help of scientists.
Season 2 comes up with the geologists on how humans tried to drill to the earth’s core.
11. Story Nory: It is a home of popular kid’s stories of various categories- original poems, myths, fairy tales, adventures every week. You can easily download the stories to your computer.
12. Story Time: It is one of the best story podcasts for tweens. It contains adventurous stories of 20 minutes long, hopefully long enough to keep your kids engaged. It is one of the best story podcasts for tweens.
13. Dream big: It is a family-friendly podcast. It inspires kids to follow their dreams and to take actions to make their dreams a reality.
14. Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!: It was started by National Public Radio (NPR) with a blend of news and comedy. This podcast was hosted by Peter Sagal and panel of comedians, who run through a series of news, sometimes, listeners can be called in to compete. It hosts a weekly celebrity guest. This is a best choice for the matured kids
15. Story Pirates: It is hosted by a group of world-class actors, comedians, improvisers, and musicians who act out original stories created by kids.
Podcasts not only help to entertain your kid but also helps to gain knowledge. They help to maintain the kids active and healthy by reducing screen time. It is the best way to listen to the audio content which stimulates other senses and drives into a new way of entertainment and learning. There are many podcasts, here are the 15 best podcasts for tweens which are kids friendly.
