Website of the Week: One More Story

Sometimes the best sites are the ones that are constantly used and are often overlooked. Earlier today I was sitting here contemplating blog content for this week while Little Miss Techie sat behind me on her computer captivated by Taro Yashima’s story of Crow Boy on One More Story. We’ve had our One More Story subscription for almost 6 months and I’m in disbelief that I haven’t mentioned this amazing site before!

One More Story is an online subscription story site that features a wonderful collection of stories that children can listen to while reading along. Besides listening to multicultural tales like Crow Boy, Little Miss Techie enjoys listening to favorites like Pete’s a Pizza by William Steig, Stellaluna, and A House is a House for Me. She also just discovered The Ugly Vegetable illustrated by Grace Lin. Captain Computer enjoys Mouse Paint by Ellen Stoll Walsh and Ezra Jack Keats’ The Snowy Day.

One More Story is bookmarked on Little Miss Techie’s web browser and when she clicks into the site, she can choose books from 4 different “bookshelves.” Each bookshelf is a different screen that she navigates between by clicking on the colored tabs at the top of the screen. She can browse the books by simply looking at the cover art or can hear the title and author of the book by clicking on the book. To select a book, Little Miss Techie clicks on the green button below to hear the story. At any time, Little Miss Techie can click on the red stop sign icon on the left side of the text to go back to the bookshelf and select another book or quit.

I love One More Story because of the variety of classic stories that can be found on the virtual bookshelves. The books that Little Miss Techie reads on the site are many of the same ones we check out from the library and spend time snuggling on the couch reading.

So why do we subscribe to One More Story when the site contains many of the same titles that we read together?

One More Story has been a great way to reinforce a love of stories and has helped Little Miss Techie become a more fluent reader.

I love that as the books are being read, each word turns red to distinguish it from the rest of the text. This allows children to make the connection between the written and spoken word and therefore build their site word vocabulary. Seeing the same words in print over and over again embeds them in a child’s mind and allows them to be easily recognized which aids in fluency.   A fluent reader spends less time figuring out words (decoding) and more time concentrating on comprehending the meaning of the story.

For a younger child, like almost 3 year old Captain Computer, virtual books on One More Story help to reinforce concepts of print. Watching the words being highlighted in red as they are read helps young children realize that print goes from left to right. Highlighting also reinforces the idea that there is one printed word on the page for every spoken word, also known as one to one correspondence.

Our one year subscription to One More Story was a gift from Little Miss Techie’s Paw Paw and Kung Kung (grandparents) and was $44.

One More Story is currently offering a 3 month subscription for $15. Click here to take advantage of this offer.

No promotional fee was paid for this post. Little Miss Techie and I just wanted to share one of our favorite sites with you and allow you to take advantage of the great 3 months for $15 offer if you were interested!