Listening Center

So after years of wanting to create a listening center I finally did! I don’t know what took me so long, I think I thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was, but it was super easy! I don’t have the space in my classroom for a table with a boom box and headphones, so our listening center needed to be mobile and compacts. So to Pinterest I went for ideas! I finally found what I was looking for here.

I work for a small non-profit child care center, and so there was not money for us to buy Ipods for the classroom, so I wrote a letter and asked my parents if they had an old Iphones or Ipod touches that they would be willing to donate to our class. After a few months I finally had a family donate us 2 old Iphones. Now I don’t know why I though this would be that hard to get our books on CD on these Iphone, but it took me almost a YEAR before I finally sat down and tried to get books on the Iphones.

It was so simple I just uploaded the books like I would any CD to itunes, went and found a picture of the cover so the kids could match the pictures. Last step was to create a playlist of the books I wanted on the Iphones and Ta da! There you had it, books on CD were now on the Iphones for the kids to listen independently.

I have slowly introduced how to use the listening center to only 2 children at a time, but they pick up quickly how to use the Iphone and are enjoying listen to books on there own. I can’t wait to add more and switch out the books to keep the center fresh.