Good story CDs for a 2.2 yr old

[Murtette]

We're going to be doing a lot of long journeys over Xmas and I think I'll go potty if we're just stuck on nursery rhymes. Are there any good story CDs for a just 2 yr old. She loves all Julia Donaldson, all Mr Men & is beginning to know the basic plotline of quite a few fairy tales. She is also a fan of Peppa Pig, Bob the Builder & Postmand Pat. Any suggestions? Whilst she's usually pretty good at swapping between "her songs" and "Mummy's songs" the journey from Yorkshire to Cornwall over 2 days is going to test her patience so much that "her songs" will dominate and I'll need some variety!

Thanks

Can't help with the story cds.

Maybe an expensive option but could you get her a little dvd player. Lets face it toddlers are transfixed by TV so this might make your journey easier with less meltdowns. You could get come Barney dvds they last about 40mins and are very cheap on amazon.

A few that dd used to like (we live 7 hr train journey from family so well practiced at this )

The Big Mog CD (but skip over Mog's ABC as it will drive you insane . . .)
Percy the Park Keeper (Richard Briers reads it fantastically)
Kipper

If you have any way of doing it, tbh at that age though the absolutely most successful thing that we found was to record ourselves reading story books. We just did it at bedtimes & worked our way through all her favourite books. Even though it was much fuzzier and less 'well read' than the professional ones they seemed to hold her attention much better when she was very small. And while its a bit painful to do / listen to, much, much better than 7 hours of singing & extemporising . . . .

We found a set of fairy stories that kept us going through traffic jams for hours and hours.

And we had an excellent cd of caribbean songs, with a song book, which kept us going for many many hours and provided welcome relief from the wheels on the bus.

You can download stories for free from storynory.com - they give guidelines as to which ones are suitable for younger children and my two love their stories.

Also we have the little princess CD read by Julian Clery (good for boys and girls - I have 2 boys).

At that age their attention span was more songs/nursery rhymes than whole stories although we also got on well with the story CDs that come with books - we would read the book first a few times at home so that they could see the pictures etc. and then play the CD on the journey.

We had Captain Duck for example which got played to death. I agree with Kipper and Mog, and we also got "My naughty little sister" recently too.

The tiger who came to tea

To vary the songs a bit, how about the Julia Donaldson CDs; we have room on the broom and the Gruffalo CDs and both are popular with both DC. Cat in the hat is brilliant. DD2 (now just 3) loves the narrated Peter and the Wolf (like this one www.amazon.co.uk/Prokofiev-Peter-Saint-Saens-Carnival-Animals/dp/B00025OH8O) which also varies the nursery rhyme monotony. In general, I agree that attention span can flag with proper story CDs, but little red train with sound effects is fun. Also try Barefoot books for song CDs with a difference (2nd thread I've recommended barefoot on today, but no conflict of interest, I just love the books!)

The Julia Donaldson 6 CD set is good because the stories are amazing...... But I warn you now, it will drive you clinically insane! Miriam Margoyles does most of the narrating, and a lot of it is very OTT. My DD loves it though!