The Kids Short Stories podcast is a staple at our house, so let’s just say when I was talking to Mr. Jim, the host of this kid podcast, I felt like I was talking to a celebrity. My kids definitely thought I was super cool that day when I told them I got to interview Mr. Jim.
Links from the Episode:
More Information About Kids Short Stories
The show’s description of kids’ short stories is: we engage kids through the power of story and equip parents to let their child’s imagination run free every day. The length of each episode is about 10 minutes long. The series is ongoing with new episodes available every week day.
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Introduction to Mr. Jim & Kids Short Stories
My name is Mr. Jim and I live in South Carolina with my wife and three boys. And I began this podcast journey two and a half, almost three years ago. And it’s just been an amazing ride. I quit my corporate job last summer, went full time with this and I just, I love kids podcasts so much right now.
How Kids Short Stories Started
Kids’ short stories was something my wife made me. For our kids I was, it was one of those great things that she made me do. I was traveling a lot for work and our kids at the time, I think were two, four and six, and I was always making bedtime stories just on the spot, like, alright kids, are we doing a pirate adventure? Are we doing a alien adventure, like a mystery? What are we doing? And I would just make up a story on the spot for them.
And I started traveling a lot for work. Missing a lot of bedtimes and my wife, Jocelyn, she would call me and say, Hey the kids miss your stories. I just read them five books, but they keep telling me they want a story. And I don’t know how to do that. So you tell ’em a story. And so I’d step away from my customer, you know, into the bathroom or wherever and you know, make up a story on the phone. And it was, you know, we did that a few times and Jocelyn was like, you should, why don’t you record a couple. And text them to me. And so then we can just play them. So I made a voice memo on my phone, just sitting in my car, making a couple stories up. I texted her the voice memo. It would eventually get lost in the text thread. And where did that thing go? Like, can you send it to me again?
And so I just, one day was like, Hey, I’ll just put ’em on as a podcast to house them somewhere so that you can listen to them on your phone or the kids’ iPads and that was what it was. And so I just started putting these stories on the podcast. It was just for my kids and then people started leaving reviews. And that was, that caught me off guard. At first. I was like, Joslyn, Did you tell your friends about this? Like who are these people? The review, you know, would say my daughter’s name is Sophie, my daughter loves your stories, she loves unicorns and rainbows. Could you make a story? Eh, absolutely. That sounds great. Like thank you for the super, like the fun creative hook. I’ll be able to make a new story, a bedtime story for my kids.
So it just began this journey of parents sending or kids sending in their story ideas into kid short stories, where I was using those creative hooks to make a story really for my own kids’ benefits of their bedtime stories. But it spread pretty quickly. And, this started the fall right before COVID. And so I think that that season of kids being at home a lot, like parents were looking for these things and so it, it, blew up quite a bit. And yeah. So now. Tens of millions of downloads later. Here we are.
What to Expect from Kids Short Stories
I’m all for imagination. I grew up listening to audio stories or radio dramas or books on tape or like that kind of stuff. And, audio has a really special magic, especially for kids. And it pulls in an active sense of imagination. If they’re listening, their mind is working, putting this picture together. And I find the message of audio for kids to be a lot stickier. Sometimes than YouTube stuff that they’re just sitting in front of staring at. I want parents and that family I would love for this to be a together thing where the way that I tell stories or the way that I portray the messages in these things is like I wanna put parents in a really positive light in, in the story. There’s, you know, a lot of content for kids that it’s like, oh, the, the silly parents that don’t know really what’s going on as their kids are off on an adventure. No, I’d rather have the parents be supportive and, and in that story in a positive way.
So a lot of the resources that we give parents, I get, like, I send out emails directly to parents with, with some Easter egg kind of information that they get to drop to their kids. Because I, I want the parents to join their kids’ imagination. And, so I’m always trying to figure out ways to do that, but the ultimate goal of kid short stories is to promote kids’ imagination and creativity and bring the family together in that experience.
The Vibe of Kids Short Stories
It’s pretty silly. Like I have a lot of different voices, unicorns and, and fire breathing dragons and, and, you know, like all the stories for kid short stories come from kids’ imaginations. And one day it can be. You know, unicorns and the next day it’s on a treasure hunt or trying to get to the treasure before the pirates are. And, and so like you just, you just kind of never really know what you’ll get. But there’s short stories, so the 10 minutes is kinda the average mark, which I’ve found to be really great for driving to school. You can just hop into any story and not really need to know a lot of context of what’s going on beforehand and not feel like you missed out on anything.
Favorite Character from Kids Short Stories
So kid short stories has kind of been this incubator is how I think of it, an incubator of ideas. And since it is fully driven by kids’ submissions, like there’s thousands of submissions, but yeah, the spy world has been really fun for me to to dig into and the evil Dr. Stinkybreath, who’s trying to take over the world to make it stinky, love that guy. Or like, you know, he’s a bad guy, but he is fun. Bernie, I really, I’ve liked Bernie, our fire breathing dragon.
Yeah, there’s, there’s a lot of characters that have become reoccurring because so many submissions say, Hey, I want to do such and such with that character from, you know, the episode last month. And it just becomes the recurring characters because the kids keep submitting those names.
Kids Short Stories & Kids
I feel really, I feel really in tune with their language and how they interact with stories. Malachi my middle son. He’s my ultimate critic, he’s the judge that I trust to see, like, did this story resonate or not. For moms listening, parents listening this is definitely geared for kids really three to 10. It’s pretty wide age spread, but we have a lot of fun along the way.
Kids Podcasts
I think the biggest area for growth is that parents, most parents are not even aware that podcasts exists for kids, parents, if you’re, you know, listening and wondering, like, what does it mean for a kid’s podcast? Like it is, it’s just. A new medium of audio entertainment for kids. That’s been around for decades and decades. Once on radio cassette tapes, like wherever now, it’s just in podcast form, which makes it a lot more accessible for families. So give, give podcasts a shot for your kids and, and you’ll be really happy with what happens.
Where to Find Mr. Jim & Kids Short Stories
Our main home is HeyMrJim.com. That’s where you can find all the different shows and content that we’re doing. But if the easiest way to find these is just searching Mr. Jim, either on apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever our, our shows will pop up when you search for Mr. Jim. So kid short stories, you can go to kidshortstories.com to get some direct information specifically about that. And yeah on, Hey, Mr. Jim’s site, each podcast has its own place.
