41 more FREE Audiobooks for children: this time, for students in Years 2 to 6
We’ve had such a positive response to our list of free, quality audiobooks for kids in Kindergarten and Year 1. So we thought: “Why not finish the job?”
For school-aged kids with reading difficulties like dyslexia, audiobooks can play a big, positive role, in ensuring students continue to be exposed to quality, age-appropriate literature – even if they have difficulty reading them in written form. For students with dyslexia and other decoding difficulties, audiobooks can help mitigate the “Matthew Effect” – where good readers get better at understanding higher level language and reading by reading more, and poor readers fall further behind in reading and higher level language skills because they read less often.
Audiobooks can also be helpful for children with developmental language disorder (DLD). Students with DLD can listen to stories (or parts of stories) several times to help them to understand complex syntax and new vocabulary used in books that are often not found in conversational speech.
Enough, already! Just give us the book links!
Fair enough! Without further ado, here are 41 of our favourite audiobooks – all with accessible YouTube links.
As with our list for Kindergarten and Year 1 kids, we’ve selected books recommended in the Core Knowledge English Curriculum, a free, knowledge-based curriculum. You’ll note that some of the choices are rather advanced, especially for Year 5 and Year 6 students. We say give them a go anyway! You can always step down a level if you need to, and there is some evidence that setting high expectations for kids around literacy, reading and scholarship can help them to develop a habit of reading.
| Year | Story | YouTube link |
| 2 | Beauty and the Beast | https://youtu.be/3HarsLaeMqs |
| The Blind Man and the Elephant (Traditional) | https://youtu.be/4OXr1sgHZx0 | |
| A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens) | https://youtu.be/n3fN_-rupwo | |
| Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White) | https://youtu.be/TgsD-xdJdoM | |
| The Emperor’s New Clothes (Hans Christian Andersen) | https://youtu.be/l4AZyOA-w8g | |
| The Fisherman and his Wife (Brothers Grimm) | https://youtu.be/AxpqqABCz2E | |
| How the Camel Got His Hump (Kipling) | https://youtu.be/qq7Sm4eHj38 | |
| The Magic Paintbrush (Chinese Traditional) | https://youtu.be/UPRWE6Q4XL8 | |
| Peter Pan (James M. Barrie) | https://youtu.be/IG_z2L0DKKo | |
| The Tongue-Cut Sparrow (Japan) | https://youtu.be/nuY5TtL6UsM | |
| The Tiger, the Brahman, and Jackal | https://youtu.be/RCupvCCCFa0 | |
| 3 | Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll) | https://youtu.be/MPgJ4qXyW7E |
| Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp (Arabian Nights) | https://youtu.be/OYGv52vXCME | |
| Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (Arabian Nights) | https://youtu.be/EPhQAphrQe0 | |
| The Hunting of the Great Bear/ The Never Ending Bear Hunt (Native American) | https://youtu.be/bH2mCcivliQ | |
| The Husband Who was to Mind the House (Gone is Gone) | https://youtu.be/6oBaiZksCXI | |
| The Little Match Girl (Hans Christian Andersen) | https://youtu.be/EHnDT1SO8sc | |
| The People Could Fly (African American tale) | https://youtu.be/uitNI3iPrmM | |
| William Tell | https://youtu.be/eehpoMm5gpc | |
| Wind in the Willows excerpts (Kenneth Grahame) – The River Bank and The Open Road | https://youtu.be/4-Y8y8J3410 https://youtu.be/1cQpHdNM53Y | |
| 4 | The Fire on the Mountain (Ethiopia) | https://youtu.be/xvXoAadD8VI |
| Gulliver in Lilliput and Brobdingnag (Swift) | https://youtu.be/2iIAODGf8q0 | |
| The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving) | https://youtu.be/me-HYW5nPjQ | |
| Rip Van Winkle (Irving) | https://youtu.be/PQnTNmipwCw | |
| The Magical Brocade (Chinese) | https://youtu.be/Ubr9cykrtSw | |
| Pollyanna (Porter) | https://youtu.be/dj-mnIwnFFM | |
| Robinson Crusoe (Defoe) | https://youtu.be/6iQBVuFg9m8 | |
| Robin Hood | https://youtu.be/NRzFxdaijC4 | |
| St. George and the Dragon | https://youtu.be/wEwNd_yInKA | |
| Treasure Island (Robert Louis Stevenson) | https://youtu.be/atBFFhV2Jcs | |
| 5 | The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain) | https://youtu.be/SF7lSyjmZwQ |
| Little Women (Alcott) | https://youtu.be/IyRaziFnN_E | |
| Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass | https://youtu.be/swYQ_-TNutI | |
| The Secret Garden (Burnett) | https://youtu.be/OKBbUrr9oQ0 | |
| Tales of Sherlock Holmes, including the Red-Headed League (Doyle) | https://youtu.be/wp_6Jg5pLYc | |
| Don Quixote (Cervantes) | https://youtu.be/Q7dNYcFUyjA | |
| A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Shakespeare) | https://youtu.be/SRZ2SmmyMC4 | |
| 6 | The Odyssey (younger readers) | https://youtu.be/R60N9qX6fBE |
| The Iliad (younger readers) | https://youtu.be/q70HD3Gux7M | |
| The Prince and the Pauper (Twain) | https://youtu.be/E4_wkukogXQ | |
| Julius Caesar (Shakespeare) | https://youtu.be/zVEowZ-0A7I |
Related articles:
- Too many stories, not enough facts? Free tips and resources to boost your child’s knowledge and reading comprehension skills
- Read non-fiction books to your late talkers and preschoolers: here’s why
- Is your child struggling to read? Here’s what works
- Dyslexia vs Developmental Language Disorder: same or different, and what do we need to know about their relationship?
- Speaking for themselves: why I choose ambitious goals to help young children put words together
- For reading, school and life success, which words should we teach our kids? How should we do it?
Image: https://tinyurl.com/y4tzy3r7
Banter Speech & LanguageBanter Speech & Language is an independent firm of speech pathologists for adults and children. We help clients in our local area, including Concord, Concord West, North Strathfield, Rhodes, and Strathfield, and all other suburbs of Sydney.
Banter Speech & Language is owned and managed by David Kinnane, a Hanen- and LSVT LOUD-certified speech-language pathologist with post-graduate training in the PreLit early literacy preparation program by MultiLit, the Spalding Method for literacy, the Lidcombe and Camperdown Programs for stuttering, and Voicecraft for voice disorders. David is also a Certified PESL Instructor for accent modification.
David holds a Master of Speech Language Pathology from the University of Sydney, where he was a Dean’s Scholar. David is a Practising Member of Speech Pathology Australia and a Certified Practising Speech Pathologist (CPSP). David is a part-time Associate Lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney’s Graduate School of Health. David sits on Speech Pathology Australia’s Ethics Board and Professional Standards Advisory Committee.
