Any child of the 70’s or 80’s will remember these…
Oh the hours I’d spend, recording songs off the radio, wearing out tapes as I hit pause/play/pause/play line by line so that I could write down all the lyrics to Rick Astley. I have a couple of precious tapes of my sister and I singing as she practiced her guitar, and the mix tapes… Oh, the memories that are spooled onto those mix tapes!
But my children also have cassette payers – of course, now they also have ipods/MP3’s etc, but when they were younger, the cassette player was the only answer for them.
They LOVED audio books, and would usually listen to one at night before lights out. But young children are too ham fisted to trust with delicate CD’s, and I didn’t want them sleeping with headphones on from an MP3 player.
But really – how much damage could they do to an old-fashioned audio cassette?
As Christmas draws nearer, it gets harder and harder to get over-excited, over-tired small people off to sleep. But we have always found that putting on a story tape and have them lie in bed and listen to it soon has them nodding off when the lights are off and the house is quiet.
And the double bonus is that the tapes are so CHEAP!
We have a pile of old favourites, everything from Spot’s Magical Christmas through the Famous Five to Harry Potter. You can still pick them up new, but secondhand are fine; charity shops, car boots and ebay are all a goldmine of amazing classic stories at a bargainous price.
Even toddlers can manage putting a cassette on, and learn quickly that the triangle means ‘play’.
If you don’t still have a cassette player, and you’re looking for a new one, we personally particularly love the Roberts Radio RC9907 – it has everything you need, and nothing you don’t, and being a Roberts the build quality is fabulous. Sturdy buttons which give a satisfying soft thunk, which is always important. We’ve had cheaper ones, and they always get broken by small children dropping them, or being a bit heavy-handed. This one will last for years – long after the children move out I can see it going strong in the shed :)
