21 Ways to Access FREE Audiobooks Online
Are you struggling to find free audiobooks for your classroom’s listening center? Here are 21 ways teachers can access free readers online for elementary literacy centers.
While Audible is an option, your local library and the below websites also provide free read-aloud audiobook resources for your classroom. These tips will save your listening center and ensure a wide range of engaging books for kids.
Check out these for free audiobooks for kids!
Most of these tips are resources for FREE audio books. Some are paid.
Not all of them will be accessible to you, but hopefully, you will find something that works for your classroom and with your district’s resources.
21 Ways Teachers Can Access FREE Audiobooks for Listening Centers IN Elementary Classrooms
Here are 21 ways that teachers can access cheap or free audiobooks. These are in no particular order.
Some ideas to access audiobooks for education will require some upfront work, but once you do it, you should be set! Are you ready to find out how to get educational audiobooks for the classroom?
1. Amazon Audible has Audiobooks for the Classroom
Audible, owned by Amazon, is my go-to website for audiobooks. It is the best way to listen to audiobooks. There are always promotions available for audiobook subscriptions, but did you know that you can buy audiobooks without a subscription? I personally don’t have an audible subscription and just pay for books that I want at a discount when I find a deal.
Read Aloud Revival is a great resource for Audible deals for kids. Read Aloud also has a ton of other resources and booklists, but the Audible book deals are awesome and cheap! There are often a ton of deals on children’s audible books every month.
There are also ways to listen to Audible books for free. Here are some audible free listens. If you scroll down, you’ll see some of the classics available for free!
2. Kindle Unlimited has Audiobooks for Kids
Kindle Unlimited not only has books for classrooms, but it also has free audiobooks. While you do have to pay for a Kindle Unlimited subscription, you don’t have to pay for each individual book you download.
Look for Kindle Unlimited books with a headphone icon. Those books have a narration that you can pair with your Kindle device or application. Not only can students read the books, but they can listen to them being read!
3. Physical Listening Devices from the Library
Your local library is FREE and a great resource for teachers to access free audiobooks for the classroom. You can check out physical playing devices where students can plug in their headphones or look at using online resources with your library card.
Tip: Register with more than one library system
Each library has its own collection of books. If you have the ability to join more than one library system, you will have access to more books. Most of the apps have the ability to switch between user profiles easily.
4-6. Online Resources from the Library
There are several apps and free readers online resources that are awesome for library users! They have cheap or free audiobooks!
Libby, Overdrive, and Hoopla are my favorite resources. They all require a library subscription. If you have more than one library card, you can easily switch between them with most of these apps.
4. Libby
We use Libby for our family and we can switch between four different library cards from one login. It’s the main resource we use. Sidenote: My 10-year-old has discovered that he had listened to the one book of The Boxcar Children 66 times on Libby. I knew then that I needed to steer him toward other audiobooks!
5. Hoopla
Hoopla is a platform that connects with your local library. You’re limited to the number of items you can download each month and this number varies. It’s still a great resource for those hard-to-find audiobooks for kids. We use it for books that we cannot find on Libby.
6. Library Website
This may go without saying, but your library’s website is also a great resource. While you can use an app, sometimes it’s easier to work from a computer. Overdrive should connect with your library’s website.
7. Get Students Their Own Library Cards to Access FREE Audiobooks
If you have the ability to get student library cards or take a field trip to the library and get library cards for your students, each of your students can log into the library on their device and download free audiobooks to listen to during class. This multiplies the amount of books you can download using the above online resources
In second grade, we would take a field trip to the library each year to get every student a library card and ensure they had access to good books to read.
8. Library Extension for Chrome to See if Books Are Available for FREE
There’s a great Chrome extension that I love using to see what is available at my local library. If you’re searching for a book on Amazon, this extension will show you if the book is available at your local libraries. This has saved me a ton of time and money!
9-11. Free Websites with Classic Audiobooks
Audible, Kindle Unlimited, and the library are great options, but sometimes you just want some FREE websites.
LibriVox, Open Culture, and Lit2Go tend to have the classics available as free audiobooks. They’re free because the books’ copyrights have expired. The voices in the narrations tend not to be as engaging as books you can rent from the library or download from the audible.
These books are available for all ages, so be sure to take a look at the websites before students access them.
12. Story Online
Story Online is a collection of well-known stories read by celebrities including Betty White, James Earl Jones, and more. Story Online adds new books regularly and is funded by the Screen Actors Guild. Including it is a fantastic choice when you lack a needed text for substitute plans.
13. Storynory
Storynory is a collection of fairytales and classic tales. The stories are read aloud and include text on the page.
14. Spotify
Did you know Spotify has audiobooks? Search “audiobooks” to see what they have to offer! Spotify has produced its own audiobooks, but they also have public-domain books and short story podcasts.
15. YouTube Video
Many picture books are read aloud on YouTube. You can likely find your favorite books read aloud as a YouTube video and set up a listening center with books read aloud via videos.
I have several sets of resources available of books read aloud to kids. Most of the videos are available on YouTube. These videos are easy to access with QR Codes and give students flexibility and choice when accessing audiobooks.
One audiobook resource is this Halloween and October Books. There are 53 books read aloud on YouTube, each with a QR code for YouTube and SafeYouTube.
16. Podcasts for Kids
Did you know that there are a ton of podcasts available now for kids? Some of them are story podcasts, where a narrator reads aloud a book and tells a story about it. Some of my favorite kid podcasts are:
- Storynory
- The Past & the Curious
- But Why
- The Two Princes
- Storytime
- What If World
- Stories Podcast
- The Unexplained Disappearance of Mars Patel
17. Epic
Epic is another resource that is great for students and parents. It is FREE for teachers! Students can access thousands of stories on their devices. It includes thousands of free audio books and books that students read.
If you have students with an IEP, you might consider asking your district to purchase Learning Ally. Parents can also purchase it for their children.
Learning Ally is specifically designed to help struggling learners access books. Most of the books have paired an ebook with narration. It highlights the sentences as the text is read aloud. It also has a vast selection of books, including many textbooks.
18-19. Learning Ally and Bookshare
If you have students with IEPs, look into getting them access to Learning Ally and Bookshare. These services are available to students who have learning needs that require audiobooks. Some of the books are computerized, but many books are in the same audiobook format you can check out from the library.
Also, if students have a Learning Ally account, they can easily get a Bookshare account for free.
20. Record Yourself Reading Books
As a last resort, and before all of our technological advancements, I used to read books aloud and record them onto tape (tapes are what came before CDs 🙂
You can now record audio into video or MP3s and give your students access to the files. This is a great tool when you can’t find an audiobook version. It does take time, but once it’s done, it’s done!
Garage Band is a tool you can use on a Mac. Many phones have video and audio capabilities, too!
21. Use AI to Generate an Audio Version of Text
AI has come a long way this past year and I bet by the time you’re reading this post, it has improved by leaps and bounds! Did you know that you can create audio versions of text with AI? It’s not 100% perfect, but it’s pretty darn good! Here are a few options to get you started with AI read-aloud texts:
Do you have other resources that you use for audiobooks for the classroom? I’d love to hear what you’re using in your classroom in the comments below!
You have a great list of audio books, but unfortunately, due to copyright laws you aren’t able to record yourself reading picture books and teachers should be discouraged from using videos of others reading aloud picture books.
Super useful! Thanks a lot! I can also share my reading experience in addition to the ways you mentioned. I like listening to audiobooks on Audible, so I use a powerful downloader called AudFree Audible Converter to save my titles. Anyone who is interested can give it a try.