Bao & Bun's Bilingual Journey

Podcasts for kids and parents!

We’ve been using the 親子天下 audio app for several years now. Recently, I started exploring other kid-friendly podcasts to play during our car rides. Both kids really love the 豬探長推理故事集 podcast. Unlike 親子天下, this podcast features more dramatic sound design and colloquial phrases like “你那位啊？” My husband and I find certain sentences funny, and the kids really enjoy it, constantly asking to listen to more episodes.

Another podcast, 奶油啤酒, is one I’m saving for the future. It’s a podcast of Harry Potter in Taiwanese Mandarin. It doesn’t have dramatic sound design and is more like an audiobook. I think it’ll be a good resource for later.

I also enjoy three podcasts for parents.

寧夏璐 is my favorite. The hosts are a pediatrician and a news anchor, both with calm demeanors. They have children in different school systems in Taiwan and invite guests from various professions and they also dedicate certain episodes to answer listeners’ questions.

葉揚躺一下 is a newer podcast that didn’t start as a family podcast. The host, 葉揚, is a bestselling author in Taiwan, known for her weekly diary on Facebook. Her hosting style is relaxing and not too serious, as indicated by the title “just lay down 😆.” Recently, she’s been interviewing people related to kids and parenting.

The last one is a local (US) podcast by two Taiwanese moms living in LA/Irvine. I enjoy their podcast because they discuss the differences between Taiwanese and US cultures and share their experiences growing up as immigrants, which I can relate to.

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Responses to “Podcasts for kids and parents!”

  1. KWu

    These are great resources, thank you for sharing! I completely rely on English blog posts about Mandarin podcasts for kids, because I’m otherwise too overwhelmed by my lack of Mandarin literacy to try to find series on my own that will provide enough appealing-to-kids Mandarin content for our car commutes to school. We’ve gone through about 2 years’ worth of the podcasts we’d subscribed to in one year of school commuting, so I need to keep up with filling our queue.

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    1. Grace – Bilingual Working Mom

      Anything you’ll recommend? I’ll love to hear about your recommendations. We actually don’t have that much car ride because we live in the city where we mostly take bus or subway.

      I have more parenting recommendations because I work from home so have lots of time listening to adult related content.

      If you need more kids content, have you tried 康軒歡樂聽 app? It’s similar to 親子天下 but it’s just another platform.

      And another tip my friend gave me is to play YouTube video but just the audio. Search 屏田說故事 in YouTube. This mom records her reading to her kids. There are a lot of bridge books on her channel that doesn’t have audio option.

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      1. KWu

        Oh awesome, further noting down your tips in my Google Doc for bookmarking content suggestions: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N-1JV8JcfIsrLvmjaSlpzXXa1MzIf5HWXEjOUlFlMD4/edit?usp=sharing

        My husband and I take turns on doing the ~35-40 min drive to school, so I settled on creating a joint podcast account using the Player.fm app so that I can manage the playlist and subscriptions and all he has to do is press play. 維多叔叔的故事歡樂車 is my son’s favorite (he is 6, almost 7) and I’m always impressed by their production quality. He also likes 從前從前 although those are a bit shorter and more simplistic generally. He was a bit resistant at first but has settled into being ok with 中文故事屋 Little Mandarin Pod as well. I really like 媽媽老師，我想問問題! Ask Mama Laoshi too but that depends on the topic for my kids. We’ve listened to the dinosaur episode dozens of times and my middle daughter likes the episode about blood for some reason?!

        海外兒童中文頻道 Overseas Kids Chinese Channel with Misa Lin and 兒童世界報報 World News for Kids have been too hard for us though, I think, and not story-based. I’ve saved them to try again at another time!

        The Mandarin podcasts for adults are fairly aspirational for me, since it would mostly be about my own language practice.

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