Mommy Suburbia: 12 Kid Friendly Podcasts To Listen To In The Car

Do you find yourself spending more and more time in the car driving your kids from one activity to another? I am certainly living this out! Between basketball practice, games, ballet and Bible study our time in the car seems to be steadily increasing.

Lately, I've been trying to think of some ideas to help pass this time in a little more creative and fun way. Sure, they could do their school work while we drive, and many times they do but I'd really like to find something we can all do together while in the car.

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Awhile back we listened to The Swiss Family Robinson audio book and really enjoyed that. This is a great option for a long road trip since you can spend a lot of time listening to a lengthy story without many interruptions but for those 15 - 20 minute shuttles back and forth in the car it can be hard to stay focused on the story.

Recently a friend recommended finding a podcast that we could all enjoy listening to together while driving. Since I would much rather listen to something like a talk show on the radio than music (sports radio shows are my favorite), I started to take her recommendation more seriously and began to do some searching for a good podcast we would all like.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you this short history lesson:

Just in case you aren't familiar with what a podcast is let me give you a short and simple history lesson on podcasts. Previously known as "audioblogging" in the 1980's, audioblogging really took off with the introduction of broadband Internet and portable digital devices. In 2004 The Guardian columnist and BBC journalist Ben Hammersley coined the term "podcast" by combining "iPod" + "broadcasting". The new word took off!

Today, through the Internet, podcast listeners can enjoy a variety of episodes of a program for free. Great content can be found from around the world on any topic or area of interest. Also, these episodes can be downloaded to your device (phone, tablet or computer) so you can listen to them anywhere, even if there isn't any WiFi. Podcasts aren't exclusive to Apple devices either. Android users can use the Google Play Music app to listen to podcasts easily too.

OK, enough of the history let's get back to our regularly scheduled program...

The challenge I knew for us would be finding something that would work for a large range of ages (from 5 - 14)! What I love about the podcast idea is that many podcasts are 15 - 30 minutes in length which for our quick car rides this seems ideal.

I had been spending quite a lot of time listening to a variety of podcasts geared towards kids and to be honest I was starting to get a bit overwhelmed because there are so many to choose from.

But then....I found this amazing list of podcasts for kids from The Zebra so I started to check them out.

My favorite podcast for kids from the info graphic is definitely The Unexplainable Disappearance of Mars Patel. My kids and I love a good mystery story and this podcast series really seems to be right up our alley. If you find yourself liking this podcast as much as we do please realize there are only two seasons available so you aren't going to want to binge listen to this all in one sitting! Spread it out and make it last a little longer.

I listened to snippets of each podcast from the 12 listed above on the info graphic and I could pretty much tell right off the bat which ones would appeal to my kids and which ones wouldn't.

I highly recommend that you, as the parent, listen to a few episodes of a podcast before your kids do so that you can make sure that the message in the podcast aligns with your family's set of values or beliefs. Since my kids age range is quite large I didn't want my youngest exposed to any topics or discussions that are too mature for him. From what I listened to from the list above the podcast topics and episodes were pretty kid friendly if not a little more geared towards a younger crowd than older.

Overall introducing podcasts into our daily car rides has been a positive experience and one that I think we will continue to keep trying. What about your family? Are there any podcasts your kids love? Please share in the comments!!

Here are some great tools to use for podcasts and traveling in the car:

Wireless Earbuds