Every parent wants to be the kind that reads bedtime stories to their kids every night. Aside from the child-parent bonding experience, reading bedtime stories have numerous other benefits. It helps develop speech and language, relieves stress, boosts a child’s IQ, enhances the child’s memory, imagination, comprehension and logic skills.

Bedtime stories also help children develop their listening skills. A child who  is eager to hear a story tries to recreate his own, whimsical world in his mind. Then, he learns to predict how a story might  end.

It also helps children develop healthy sleep patterns. Establishing the routine of a bedtime story   conditions children  to go to sleep right after the story. Consequently, they end up waking up  at the same time each day after sleeping the same time the night before. 

In addition to  intellectual development, bedtime stories also help a child’s emotional development, which includes an awareness of others’ feelings as well as the expansion of his vocabulary.

Although movies and television shows have done much to popularize this parent-child bonding experience, the truth is that most parents could only dream of having the time and energy to read bedtime stories to their kids at the end of an exhausting day.

I am one of those guilty parents who skip the bedtime stories and go straight to bed, hoping that I would have the time tomorrow.

A few nights ago, I downloaded some free audiobooks from StoryNory.com, and transferred the files to my iPod , which I attached to a speaker. The “Three Little Pigs,” debut was a big hit at home. Much to my surprise, my 6 year old and 4 year old kids enjoyed it so much that they were retelling the story and the dialogue the next day. This encouraged me to download more free titles for the coming nights.

Storynory is a podcast which features a mixture of fairy tales written by The Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen and Charles Perrault. It also features specially adapted myths and histories, and verse, including Helen of Troy, The Boy Who Flew Too High, and The Minotaur. 

There are also Bible stories, such as Joseph and His Coat of Many Colors, The Ten Commandments, and Noah’s Ark.

Since StoryNory  began in   November 2005, it  has grown tremendously in  popularity. Currently, around a quarter of a million mp3 files are downloaded each month .

The  stories are read by Natasha Gostwick, whose endearing story-telling voice  makes it a relaxing bedtime listening experience for the kids.

If you have an iPod, you can quickly download the latest 30 stories   to your computer automatically  each week through the iTunes store.