Silly Listening Ears Craft for Audible Stories

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Reading and listening are key skills for learning development, and audiobooks are a great tool that combines both skills together.

This super simple listening ears craft brings some hands-on fun to the listening process using our tool of choice, audiobooks.

For this activity, we chose a fun audiobook from our partner, Audible. They bring stories to life with voices and sounds, while helping your kids develop and fine-tune their listening skills.

Here are five playful ways to work on listening skills. 

If you’re not familiar with it already, Audible is a seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming. It sells digital audiobooks, radio, and T.V. programs, and audio versions of magazines and newspapers. It’s a one-stop shop for all things information and it’s easily accessed on any smart device or computer.

Step 1: Making the listening ears craft

You only need five supplies for this fun craft:

• Construction paper or card stock (affiliate link)
• Printout or drawing of some ears
• A pipe cleaner (affiliate link)
• Glue
• Scissors

Once you have your materials, either your child or you can cut out your hand drawn or printed ears (they can be any size you’d like).

Here are five cutting activities to build fine motor skills.

Then, lay one of the ears on top of the card stock.

Hold it against the paper while you cut around the ear, leaving a border of the construction paper. This will add strength and color to the craft.

Repeat for the other ear.

The only tricky part (it isn’t too tricky) is attaching the pipe cleaner between the ears and the construction paper.

The easiest way for us was to glue the pipe cleaner to the construction paper before gluing the ears over the top.

Place the construction paper ears facing away from each other. Glue one side of the pipe cleaner to one piece of construction paper and place a cup of water on top of the pipe cleaner to hold it in place (any weight will do, or your child’s hands).

Repeat for the other side of the pipe cleaner.

Then, once your pipe cleaner is in place (being held by weights or hands), glue the ears on top of the construction paper and pipe cleaner.

Allow the glue to dry before removing the weights that are holding down the pipe cleaners.

Step 2: Finding some audiobooks

While your listening ears craft is drying, it’s a good time to find some fun audiobooks to listen to (you may find it easier to prepare the book ahead of time).

Simply open the Audible app on your smart device or on your computer and search for the title of the story.

Here are 15 awesome audiobooks for kids

Once you have found the story or stories you’d like to purchase, simply add them to your shopping cart. Audible is an Amazon company, so you can use your Amazon account to purchase or you can join one of their subscription services.

And right now they’re offering a 30-day trial with free download – nice!

Then simply grab some headphones (we used a bluetooth speaker), or just play off your computer speakers, and you’re ready to go.

Step 3: Using the listening ears

Once the listening ears craft is dry and the book(s) have been chosen, it’s time to put on those listening ears!

Cozy up on the couch, pull up a chair at the kitchen table, lay on a blanket in the warm sun, or sit in a box for a reading adventure while your kids listen to a story come alive using Audible.

You can choose to simply have your kids listen to the story for a more focused listening activity.

Or if you have a paper copy of the book, they could follow along while they are listening.

We listened to “The Very Hungry Caterpillar” because we had a copy of the book (and fun props).

Click here for a fun craft to go along with The Very Hungry Caterpillar

It might be hard for younger kids to keep their attention without the book, but with listening practice, they will get better at being engaged listeners.

This simple and silly listening ears craft can be used as a special tool for audiobooks only, or your kids could use their listening ears when following directions, listening to music, or even during other listening focused hands-on activities.

What Audible stories will your kids listen to while using their listening ears?

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Audible. The opinions and text are all mine.