Podcasts... to entertain children in the holidays
Looking for a podcast to help occupy the children over the Easter holidays? A good place to start, said The Daily Telegraph, would be David Walliams’ Marvellous Musical Podcast – an “exuberantly silly” series in which the “prime-time polymath” seeks to introduce children to classical music. Episodes feature everything from Mozart and Beethoven to “Weird Instruments” and John Williams’s Star Wars scores. “Think Horrible Histories with harpsichords.” The “riotous” family podcast Story Pirates has actors, comedians and musicians taking ideas from children and using them to create sketches. It encourages younger children to flex their creative muscles by coming up with ever more “madcap stories for the team to act out”. Suggested starter episode: The Girl Who Turned into Spaghetti. For very young children, a vast treasury of audio from the excellent CBeebies Radio channel is available via BBC Sounds, including adaptations of Postman Pat, Andy’s Adventures, Peter Rabbit and Biggleton’s Big News. “It’s ideal to put on as an alternative to screen time.”
The Brains On! podcast is aimed at children, though “I’ll be honest, I’ve learnt plenty from it as well”, said Scott Gilbertson in Wired. So long as you don’t tell your kids it’s “educational”, they’ll love learning how insects walk on walls, how to find their way without a compass, and “even where poo and pee go when you flush the toilet”. Another series that makes science fun (aimed at ages 6-12) is Wow in the World, said Hattie Garlick in The Times. This chart-topping US podcast takes a “slapstick journey” through new developments in science and tech. Topics include “shrink rays, time machines, and a carrier pigeon called Reggie”. Slightly younger children (ages 5-8) will enjoy Everything Under the Sun, in which guests tackle all manner of listener-submitted questions. The Charlie and Lola author Lauren Child addresses “Why do we daydream?”; Grayson Perry ponders “Why does clay get hard?”; while an expert from the Natural History Museum explains why snails come out when it rains.
If your children are nuts about space travel, sit them down with The Alien Adventures of Finn Caspian, said Lindsay Patterson in The New York Times. A “mystery gang” story, it’s like ScoobyDoo meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer – but in space. Another superb story podcast (for ages 8-12) is The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel, about pupils who keep disappearing from the H.G. Wells Middle School. Lastly, Eleanor Amplified is a much-loved NPR series in which intrepid radio reporter Eleanor foils devious plots and outwits crafty villains.