Mainly school reading for my 4 year old recently:
Capyboppy, The Gods Must be Angry, Caterpillars and Butterflies, Eggs and Chicks, Tadpoles and Frogs, Is a Blue Whale the Biggest Thing There Is?, Stone Soup and other folk tale retellings, Miss Rumphius, The Story of Little Babaji, Mary on Horseback, The Bird Woman Of The Lewis And Clark Expedition
And then in his free time he has ben devouring “The secret of Droon” series. Its kind of like a less violent more young child appropriate Harry potter,
Frisky and the cat
Frisky wants to sleep
The lost coat
Is your 4 year old reading all those books for school or do you read some with him? I see a few are in the sonlight P4/5 (not sure what it is called now) curriculum - what school curriculum do you follow or do you make it up yourself?
We make it up for ourselves. Our reading list is a combo of Robinson curriculum, Ambleside online, Old fashioned education, Great books and Sonlight. He mainly reads to himself, sometimes the harder ones to me.
Laurana is now reading level 5a and 5b of ladybird key words and we are repeating the Dr Seuss books for repetition. I again took a break from the reading as she seemed to need more phonics than she had and I needed to sort out what I would teach her. We are now doing a phonics programme alongside the reading and she is reading some pages from a larger variety of books now too. I also started I can take away today (Dr Seuss early subtraction workbook) and found she is quite capable of reading the instructions herself.
My son is 4 years and 8 months. Books we have on our shelves which he has read by himself:
Thomas the Railway stories (the original series by Rev W Awdry, not the dumbed down reprinted versions that are floating around a lot these days). He only reads the stories he likes though.
We’ve a good collection of Dr Seuss books - he can read the yellow covers by himself. He also likes the Cat in the Hat Learning Library (Inside your outside, oh the things you can do that are good for you, etc.)
He’s gone through most of the Mr Men books (we bought the box set for him).
He’s read a few of the Berestain Bears books that I bought for him.
various books about Dinosaurs, including his favourite currently - Nat Geo Dinopedia. He’s mad about dinosaurs and will even read Wiki entries on the computer.
recently, I started him on Roald Dahl. He went through The Magic Finger really fast so we went onto Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and now Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Initially he didn’t want to read it but I promised to read it to him. Now he’s so into the story that he starts reading without me. Whenever my younger son interrupts us, he’ll take the book and continue reading himself rather than wait for me to get back.
We don’t really follow a reading series - I think he’s not really disciplined enough for that. He still enjoys reading basic stuff like “How do dinosaurs go to school?” And other times, he’ll read more to his level. I don’t make an issue of it so long as he reads on a daily basis. Even though he can read all the books on his bookshelf by himself, he still likes to be read to.
I have started reading The Magic Tree House Series to my 4 year old now - she is not ready to read them herself yet, but is learning a lot and enjoying them so I will carry on reading the ones I can get hold of and she can always read them again if she wants to. Most of the books I am reading to her now are chapter books with few pictures though she still enjoys some of the books I read to my baby and we also read more advanced picture books to her too.
I got book 6a of the Ladybird series for her even though I was planning at stopping at book 5 - she does have enough key words now and I did not teach her any of the new words in book 6 before letting her read it - there is something she finds familiar in those books that seem to keep her reading and I am not sure what it is - even though the books are harder than ones I would choose for her she seems to feel more confident reading them and had no difficulty with any of the new words. I have ordered book 7-12 (only the a series)for her too and will see what happens with these. I am about to start Little Bear with her next (we are still reading everything together)
As for the phonics she has done all the short vowel sounds and the diphthongs SH, TH, CH, PH, WH, the ING, ONG, ANG, UNG sounds and QU and CK. Next week we will start with the long vowel sounds starting with the silent E. Because my DD has only ever really been taught the letter sounds and not their names I must first check that she does know the vowel names before moving on - I suspect she does know them though as she learnt them off starfall and from singing the alphabet song but I also have not even taught her what a vowel is, so we will be learning that too.
Her reading has advanced since doing the phonics and she is sounding out all words she does not know by herself now - since the print she is reading in some of the books is quite small I do occassionally have to help her as she loses her place sometimes.
The magic tree house is very popular in our house too! All of them love it. We bought a boxed set of the first 28 books of amazon for About $60 au $2 a book! If the kids really like one of the stories we will buy the companion book on the subject an delve in deeper to the learning. Does anyone know of any other series like magic tree house that has a story based around true facts for children? We would love some more novels like this.
I can recommend a few more books to try as I know it can be difficult to find appropriate content and that in between difficulty! In order of difficulty
Zac powers : has different levels great for boys who read early as it has large print
fancy Nancy level one by Jane occonor for girly girls, or any level one book in the I can read series these include batman books and every other possible interest!
Tashi : some hard words but they seem to be repeated, try to get the individual stories rather than the big book of as the big book is too big!
Billie b brown then junie j jones for girls
Pearlie by Wendy harmer for girls who like pink!
Aussie nibbles wonderful individual stories
Rainbow magic series by daisy meadows, loads of books hear with a save the planet theme.
Magic tree house slots in here our top choice!
Roll Dahl books
Famous five Enid blighton books
Aussie bites a harder version of Aussie nibbles
Aussie chomps harder again. By this stage your kid can read anything and you will be scanning books to ensure the content is safe faster than lightning to keep up with your kids reading appetite!
I just had to chime in and say Roald Dahl was one of my absolute favorite childhood authors. I was fascinated by Matilda, simply fascinated, and even as a child I loved the idea of this tiny little girl devouring stacks of books. Little did I know I would one day have my own Matilda. lol I really look forward to reading those books to my DD before bed when she gets a bit older.
My kids just love it, daddy usually reads it with them before bed. Our oldest girl went through it already and finished it for the first time a couple of months ago. We continue reading different stories from it, but were looking for some additional activities, and found this excellent resource:
These are Beginner Bible’s cards, they use the same art style and characters, as Beginner’s Bible, but go more in depth on different stories, Bible facts, Characters. We just got them and started supplementing our Bible stories, and the oldest really liked it.
It actually build a bit like Bible EK cards, have fun illustration on the front, and then tons of interesting facts on the back. I was considering underlining some main fact and just reading those, but so far my girl liked us reading it straight.
My son is 4 yrs and is currently on set 3 of the Bob Books, he’s mastered set 1 and 2 and the kindergarten sight words set. He’s also reading or attempting to read everything in sight which is just really fun! We just got Bob set 3 and he’s gone through 5 of them a couple of times so far (he reads 2 books a day). It only takes a couple of read throughs for him to either memorize the story or the new words in the books. I’m just really proud of him. It’s so amazing to have watched him go from sounding out flesche cards, to being able to figure out what the word says, to being able to say it faster without sounding each letter out, to reading a book, and seeing him read sight words. It’s just such a fun experience.
In the last few months, H. (now age 5.5), for his hour of reading in the afternoon, has been working on The Middle Moffat by Eleanor Estes, Harry Potter #2, Henry and Ribsy, Henry Huggins, The Mouse and the Motorcycle, and Ralph S. Mouse (we’re on a Beverly Cleary kick). A few weeks ago he got sick of chapter books and requested to read some old science books. I had no problem with that so he re-read a dozen or more “Let’s Read and Find Out” books, which are great.
Obviously, he’s reading a lot more to himself than he was a year ago–but I’ll be honest, that’s only because I’m making him do so. Now that he’s five, I have fewer qualms about requiring him to do some stuff–although I still try to keep things as interesting as possible for him. He doesn’t object too much (most days), and gets into some of the books. He is all excited about mice and motorcycles just now…
We’ve been emphasizing on Russian reading for the last 4 month. And since we were visiting our family over there, we got more variety of books and also people to read them with, which made both of my LOs definitely more interested in Russian reading and literature.
We’ve been reading classical Russian poetry by Pushkin, Lermontov and Nekrasov; folk tales in Russian, children classics in Russian. We basically went all out Russian in the last 4 months, and we saw good results. We are not worried about English reading, – she loved it always and wants to do it every time there is a chance, but getting them both interested and excited in reading in Russian was important, and I am happy about results.
Skylark you simply must check out the Rhoal Dahl books! ( I don’t know how it is spelt and I am too lazy to go check) They are fabulous and there are plenty to choose from my personal favorites are the BFG ( big friendly giant) and James and the giant peach. The BFG is great for a read aloud story. Also Paul Jennings is popular with boys who have a twisted sence of humour ( full of lizard guts etc) great of you to help them be interested in their russion books.
My son (Age 5.5) has been reading this month Dr. Dolittle, The wizard of Oz, Pinnochio, Ten and twenty, some poetry books and the Basher science books (he’s read all of those over and over). My little guy (26 months) is reading the Meet the sight words volume one books.
I am trying to move now to read picture books that I read to her as a 2 and 3 year old with her. We started with Ruby flew too! today and she managed better than I had thought she would with a lot of vocabulary she has not read before. I am also working on fluency issues with her by making her follow words in a book with her finger while we play the book for her (on CD/DVD or even youtube has a few) - we did “The Tiger who came to tea” the other day. I am also getting her to read nursery rhymes and baby books to her sister with as much expression as possible.
My collections for my2.7 yr are some Indian mythical story books.
some animal dictionary book
she loves animals so much
I also included baby animals book
safety rules,environmental studies
counting math book of Delhi publications
flash cards hand made for counting numbers.
large drawing books included activity where she can read and scribble there.she is doing great.
For English, we got the entire Bob Books series, and we go through them on the Doman schedule (1 set of 5 books, retire the oldest, and add a new one each day). They are currently on Set 3.
to each other. And it is a very a sweet moment when they read their bedtime stories to us, instead of us reading to them. :yes: I also will get the additional book for them soon:
and they read other books we have, but these are their favorites at the moment.
For Arabic, they are reading Classical Arabic from our holy book, the Qur’an, along with the English translations, and for Modern Standard Arabic (fushaah) they are rapidly moving through these very simple books:
I have never read them ( growing up abroad