Tag: Kindle

Audio Books and Christmas Presents

~ wattlesandcombsfarm ~ Leave a comment

My last post was on our switch to Kindle e-readers and now I want to talk about audiobook options. My daughter is going through a big audiobook phase and wants to have one available at all times. I don’t love having her take my phone constantly, that’s where audible is, so I started looking for other options. One option is the Kindle. You can get audible on a Kindle but I haven’t really loved this as an actual solution. My biggest complaint is the Kindle will only work with Bluetooth headphones. It has a charger port just like my phone, that my phone will take headphones in, but the Kindle won’t. I don’t want everything we listen to to be on Bluetooth, so this ruins the Kindle for me as an audiobook option for her.

A second very simple option and one we use often is a Bluetooth speaker and my phone or computer. This works great and she can take it to her room and listen but again I am not a fan of her having my phone all the time or using it for sleep sounds and my phone dying. I have a friend who got her kids old iPods and using the library to put rented audiobooks on them, but the library is changing formats and that isn’t working for them anymore either.

So, this leads me to her Christmas present and what I hope ends up being the perfect solution for us. I ordered her a Yoto player. https://us.yotoplay.com/. It’s an audio player that has no screen and no access to the internet. You buy the books on yoto cards and they insert into the player and play the book. She wanted the larger one which also works as an alarm clock, plays kid-friendly podcasts, and sleep sounds. I also went ahead and grabbed one for my four-year-old nephew as it’s perfect for little kids as well. It even has an alarm clock mode where the light will stay red until it’s an acceptable time for them to get out of bed. That is something I wanted when my kids were smaller. The Yoto cards do get a little pricey, but they have a Yoto Club membership that will help with the expense. It’s pretty similar to what you would pay for an audible subscription. If you are going to order one go ahead and sign up for the Yoto Club because you get 10% off of your orders and free shipping.

Since this is her Christmas present we haven’t opened it yet and got to play around with it. I can’t say for sure this is going to be what we want it to be, but I am very hopeful this is going to be a good solution. I definitely think it’s worth looking into if you are looking for an internet-free and screen-free option for audiobooks for your kids. I will update here as soon as we have used it a bit.

Kindle E-Reader

~ wattlesandcombsfarm ~ Leave a comment

I know, I know! As homeschool moms and book readers, we prefer physical books that we can have on shelves all over the house. Books everywhere! I was the same way. My home library was quite large, and I was proud of all the amazing books I had available for my kids to read. However, we’ve recently made a change that we love and I think it might be worth considering in your own home.

We have switched over to mostly Kindle reading or e-books. I have had a Kindle for years and have switched back and forth between it and physical books many times. Currently, it has become my go-to for one very specific reason. I can adjust the text size on my Kindle. I have had glasses since 9th grade and as I’ve gotten older I have been told I need readers. My eyes are pretty sensitive and I have found myself straining, even with readers, to read the tiny words that some books have. My Kindle has helped this problem so much. It’s super simple to adjust the text size all you do is pinch and move your fingers like you’re zooming in on your phone. My kids tease me about how large my font is, but my eyes are sure thanking me. I also really just enjoy reading on the Kindle. Somehow it makes it feel like the books go faster and I have read so many more books in the past two months than I did the whole previous year because I finally picked my Kindle back up. The Kindle also has a backlight on it and I’ve been getting a good chunk of my reading done at night comfy in bed. I love it and I have now switched my children to a Kindle as well.

Kindle Kids

Back in October when Amazon had its most recent Prime Day I picked up a Kindle kids for my kids to share. When on sale, the Kindle kids is a great option. The Kindle comes with a case and a full year of Kindle kids, which is basically Kindle Unlimited but for children’s books. Both series that we were reading were available on that subscription for free. It has been wonderful. They can take the Kindle in the car, to sports practice, in the bath, to bed, basically anywhere, and read. I have seen them read so much more than when they had to carry a physical book around. Not to mention the ease with which we can get a book. For example, my oldest is currently reading through the Harry Potter series. We own two different copies of this series. One of them is older and the cover was starting to fall apart as he read it, the other is the large illustrated version, which isn’t very easy to carry around and read. We tried borrowing a copy from the library and that also was old and falling apart. So, the Kindle came in, and we downloaded his book, and he was able to read it without worrying about his book falling apart. As soon as he has finished a book the next is readily available to download and read. My younger child was also able to get the Warriors series which our closest library didn’t have in stock and has started reading that. As of now, I have no complaints, except that the kids have only one Kindle to share. So, for Christmas, I bought another and now they will each have one. On top of the kid’s Kindle I also grabbed myself a new one for Christmas. It doesn’t come with a cover or a subscription like the kids ones, but my old Kindle was going on about 8 years old and had a few cracks in the screen. I forced myself to put it under the tree but I can’t wait to open it up and use it.

Decluttering

Another benefit of the Kindle, and the reason I started thinking about them in the first place, is my ability to clear out the house a little. As I mentioned earlier we had quite a large amount of books in our home. I love books and I loved having them on the shelves, but in reality, they were taking up a lot of space. We had books that I bought years ago because I found a good deal and I was really hoping to get to, but they were still sitting on the shelf unread. So, I cleared out a ton of our books. In fact, I did this while I went through a rather large decluttering of the whole house. I kept the books we have read and loved and a few others that I felt were worthy of keeping, but I got rid of probably 80 percent of our physical books. If it gets to a point where I want to read some of the ones we decluttered we have the library or our Kindle subscriptions. Im really happy with the switch we made and the kids seem to love it as well.

Where to get books

If you switch to a Kindle you do not have to buy e-books or a Kindle subscription. If you have a library card you can borrow e-books from the library for free. My library links directly to Amazon and sends them straight to my Kindle. There is also the Libby app, which I don’t have so I can’t say a lot about it, but I’ve heard from tons of people that it’s great. I have recently bought myself a Kindle Unlimited subscription because it went on sale and has quite a few of the books I like to read, but be aware Kindle Unlimited doesn’t always have the most popular books. There is also a website called BookBub that you can tell your preferences to and you get daily emails with deals on e-books from your favorite categories. Most of those are around $2-$3. It’s not quite as fun as getting a box of books in the mail but you can get the book you are waiting on much faster and often times cheaper. I’m sure there are many other options but those are the ones I use.

Lastly, you can get audiobooks on your Kindle. You can listen via Bluetooth from your Kindle, no wired headphones, which I don’t love, but it is an option. The Kindle kids subscription has a few available with it, not really popular ones, but still an option. I will probably keep up with our audible since that’s where the books we want are, but it is another benefit of the Kindle.