Here at Food for the Hungry (FH) we love to celebrate dads and the vital role that fathers play in raising healthy children, supporting education, fostering imagination, and building thriving communities for the next generation. The first 1,000 days are so important to a child’s health and development, giving children a good start at life, and dads are such a big part of that! With Father’s Day coming up, we want to celebrate dads while acknowledging the challenge of parenting. Bringing up kind, healthy, and playful kids is a tough job!
Podcasts for Dads
So for all the dads out there, we put together a list of six podcasts to help you out. As the podcast industry has grown, so has the quality and quantity of podcasts for children. Podcasts can be an amazing tool to inspire conversations, keep your kids entertained on long car rides, or just give parents a second to catch a breath in the middle of the day.
These podcasts support your parenting — they don’t replace it. Each option below was chosen to help you as you raise thoughtful and empathetic children who share your care for other
people and the world.
Circle Round
This podcast comes from people just like you — parents with young children! The creators of Circle Round are parents too, so they know what works with little ones between the ages of 4 and 10. These episodes are between 10 and 20 minutes long and explore themes like generosity and persistence using thoughtfully-curated folktales from around the globe. Parents will enjoy guest appearances by celebrities and cultural figures, while children will stay engaged because of the creative use of sound, music, and storytelling. Every episode concludes with an activity — so you and your child can continue the conversation together.
But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids
Kids ask a lot of questions. Some of them are hard to answer! This podcast from NPR is perfect for parents of inquisitive children. Support their curiosity and don’t quash it! The hosts of But Why answer questions from real kids. They “tackle topics large and small, about nature, words, even the end of the world.” And they do it all in a kid-friendly way. This one is great for answering a child’s questions. And it equips parents to have age-appropriate but meaningful conversations in response, delving into topics from “Why do baby teeth fall out?” to “What is electricity?”
Animal Sound Safari
This is one for the animal lovers out there. It’s perfect if you have a pet-obsessed kid who loves animals. Or if you want to explore the world’s cultures and geography! Animal Sound Safari takes listeners on a tour of the animal world. Episodes focus on stories like “How did dogs become a man’s best friend?” and “How sloths went from slackers to superstars” and introduce children to far-off lands from Tibet to Saudi Arabia.
The Good Words Podcast
The dictionary contains more than 171,000 words — but most adults use only a fraction of these. The Good Words Podcast delights in language. It invites children and adults to “delight in hilarious, fascinating, wonderful words” and use them in daily life. The Good Words Podcast frames language as an exciting universe full of beauty and intrigue. Each episode focuses on a word. From “preposterous” to “echelon” and “shambolic,” listeners hear stories, songs, poems, and trivia centered around the theme. See yourself and your kids using big words and reveling in the richness of a diverse vocabulary.
What If World
A little on the silly side, What If World engages the hypotheticals kids love to imagine with stories on questions like “What if dinosaurs were alive today?” and “What if we stopped having birthdays?” to “What if the lion and the elephant met up to get some spaghetti?” It’s less educational than imaginative, but will doubtlessly provide fodder for your child’s imagination and storytelling of their own.
Tumble Science Podcast for Kids
This is on the opposite side of the silly storytelling coin.Tumble is hosted by a teacher and a scientist, who take an analytical approach to discover the actual-factual science behind experiences, plants, animals, and other aspects of the natural world we interact with every day. From virology to geology, episodes explain topics like the coronavirus or what would happen if there was no moon.
6 Recommendations for Parenting with Podcasts
And those are our six recommendations of podcasts for dads (or moms!) to listen to with their little ones. Happy listening! We hope this list inspires more podcast listening and interesting conversations between you and your kids. We know you care about raising the next generation and helping children live happy, healthy lives. Because of that, will you consider making a brighter future possible for a child in poverty by sponsoring a child through FH today? Learn more here.
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