Best Audiobooks for Kindergarteners

The best audiobooks for kindergarteners are ones that tell such a captivating story that it keeps their attention, or that they can follow along with in a hard copy of a book that you have at home!

Audiobooks can be a real big help to parents and another wonderful way to foster a love of reading! Below you’ll find out my favorite audiobook player for kids, a great list of audiobooks for kindergarteners, and some of my favorite activities to keep those little hands busy while they’re listening to audiobooks. This is the time I’m usually tidying up, starting dinner, or even enjoying a few precious moments of downtime!

Our Favorite Audiobook Player for Kids

It’s no secret that we are big Yoto fans around here. My absolute favorite way to let my kids listen to audiobooks is with our Yoto Player – there is a very basic display, but it is not a touchscreen or anything like a phone or tablet. It reminds me more of a calculator screen!

The big reason we opted for a Yoto over a Toniebox, is that I realized while browsing that all of the little figures the Toniebox requires in order to play the stories would drive me crazy. We don’t need more little toys around here – I already spend sooo much time decluttering and getting rid of stuff.

Yoto audiobooks are linked to cards the size of credit cards and kids insert the card into the player to listen. We store our Yoto cards in this cheap credit card book on our bookshelf! This fosters a sense of independence which is important for ALL ages, and I love how safe the Yoto is. My kids aren’t accessing the internet, an app, or anything on my phone, not even an app (although there is a super useful Yoto app for parents)!

Additionally, the Yoto has a superior collection of non-television character titles. Toniebox is primarily TV character books and we prefer to have the vast majority of our reading be free of television movie characters. Yes, there are some character cards on the Yoto, but the Yoto primarily has so many delightful books even for big kids – including a BBC dramatized young reader edition of Treasure Island (one of our absolute FAVORITES!), an adaptation of Little Women, and the complete and unabridged Mary Poppins collection!

We have the full size player and protective case (the “adventure jacket”), and I think the case is genius because it creates a handle and my kids tote the Yoto around to all of their favorite hideouts – forts, the playhouse outside, their secret hideout, etc.

There is also a Yoto Mini which I am considering for my 8 and 10 year old as they are beginning to crave more independence/solo time.

Kids will enjoy the curated Yoto radio station (the wildest song I ever heard them play was “Love Shack”), and a super cool daily podcast – in the years we have listened to the Yoto daily podcast, I have never heard anything the slightest bit questionable. #momwin!

Our Favorite Audiobooks for Kindergarteners

In addition to our Yoto player, we use Audible, Libby, and the Rakuten Kobo app to listen to audiobooks, but that’s typically when we are in the car or intentionally listening to something as a family.

We primarily use the Yoto for audiobooks at home, but I know Audible is also very popular so I included the links below to both platforms when possible! Here are our favorites audiobooks for kindergarten, categorized by length:

Short Audiobooks for Kindergarten (Usually Based on Picture Books)

It’s likely you’ll have hard copies of some of the books in this section, and I highly encourage you to give your child the hard copy to flip through while they are listening!

The Very Hungry Caterpillar & Other Stories (Yoto Card)
The Very Hungry Caterpillar (Audible)
Brown Bear and Friends (Yoto Card) (also available on Audible)
Blueberries for Sal (Audible) (bonus activities here!)
The Snowy Day & Whistle for Willie (Only available on Yoto website)

Bonus: Yoto cards make great Easter basket or stocking stuffers!

Frog and Toad Audio Collection (Yoto website only) (also available on Audible)
Beatrix Potter Collection (Yoto Card)
Where’s Spot? And Other Stories (Yoto website only)
Yoto Sesame Street: Fun With Friends

These next ones are medium length, but not exactly chapter books. They are collections of short stories, so the “chapters” each tell a different story.

Classic Fairy Stories (Yoto Card)
Dragon Tales (Yoto Card)
Magic Treehouse Collection (Yoto Card, another great basket stuffer!)

Chapter Book Audiobooks for Kindergarten

It’s not likely that your child will sit for an entire chapter book at home, but these can be absolute life savers on car trips! At home, it can add anticipation to audiobook time if you only allow kids to listen to one or two chapters per day.. before you know it, they’ll be begging you for “just one more!”

Happy Families: The Audio Collection (Yoto website only)
The Railway Children (Yoto Card)
The Boxcar Children (Yoto Card)
Little House in the Big Woods (Audible)
The Tale of Desperaux (Yoto website only) (also available on Audible)
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Yoto website only) (also available on Audible)

Activities to Help Kids Listen to Audiobooks

Audibooks are the best tool ever for car trips. Parents and kids both get to enjoy listening! When you own a Yoto card, it automatically appears in the parent app which means you can listen to it even without the Yoto if you’re on a car trip, plane ride, etc.

And a note about kids and listening.. it’s really important to remember that kids hear e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g…. even things you don’t want them to. 🥴 So just because your kids are playing while listening quietly to an audiobook, doesn’t mean they aren’t hearing it! I bet they’re processing more than we realize.

I do let the kids use the Yoto whenever they want to, but I like to give the kids something to keep their hands busy if we are having structured audiobook time where I want them to stay occupied in one place for a bit.

During structured audiobook time, I ask the kids to refrain from talking or engaging in very active play. This is not something that most kids just magically know how to do, they have to be trained to be quiet and relatively calm during audiobook time.

A little patience goes a long way here! The first half-dozen times we did this, it only lasted about 10 minutes. Nowadays, I know I can expect the kids to quietly listen to audiobooks for at least half an hour, sometimes longer!

Our favorite hands-on audiobook quiet-time activities include:

Playing with homemade playdough, modeling clay, or beeswax
Simply doodling on a piece of paper
Coloring a coloring page
Building with LEGO pieces (but I don’t give them minifigures during audiobook time because then they do get distracted, ha!)
Watercolors on watercolor paper OR for even less mess paint with water activity books
My oldest is obsessed with his Shashibo Fidget cube!

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