For Nursery Rhymes ( although we have tried all different versions) we by far prefer Christian Mother Goose Rhymes Big Book
Both of my kids love it! Poetry is fun and more meaningful then the original rhymes, and they like that some poems are really long with the story going on and on 
Even though we had it for the last 2 years, we keep on reading and re-reading it.
My daughter has read “It’s Mine” and “Owl and Mouse” recently and has now begun reading The Beginner’s Bible - the stories in there are nice and short which keeps her attention and the vocabulary is at a good level for her.
Today I got some more Usborne books - Level 4 and Series One and Two books by post. My daughter asked me to read all of them to her which I did but later she picked them up and started reading them to herself as I was not up for reading them all again to her. They are a little beyond her reading level however so she only read a little, but I am glad she is now having enough confidence to read by herself. In our reading time she also insisted on picking a book beyond her level (The Golden Egg by A.J. Wood and Maggie Kneen) but when she got fidgety and I told her that we would stop as the book was a bit difficult, she insisted she could read it and finished the part she had assigned for herself with minimal help from me. I do not want her to frustrate herself by reading things that are a bit too difficult for her so am not really sure what to do about this now as she is starting to want to read independently but at the same time needs some help still.
After reading this I decided to buy those books. I have the whole alphabeth plus box full of word flashcards from ebay (very very cheap) and the books are just perfect!
Karma to you Skylark 
We (dd not reading yet) also read Oxford reading tree books , Ladybird books and Letterland books.
That’s great lalask - hope she enjoys them.
My DD is now jumping around reading all sorts of things at various levels - she reads simple books to her sister, is reading some more Frog and Toad. We have started book 7a of ladybird key words though it is slightly too easy for her - I still plan on doing these with her as it is reinforcing some of the more common words so that she can spend more time sounding out less common words in other reading. She is also still reading The Beginner’s Bible though we are no longer reading it in order and are just reading whatever story she chooses. I have stopped the phonics for now as she seems to be picking up any word now even if she does not know the rule. I do however plan to get back to it and complete it at some stage (we needed a break)
I looked back at this post and it is amazing how far she has come in the year and 4 months since she started reading books. Her stamina has also come on nicely and she will read longer passages more easily now though it will be some time still til she reads independently. To help with silent reading I have started doing treasure hunts with her where I write clues on cards and hide them around the house. She likes to do the whole treasure hunt independently which means she will read the cards silently and the clues are short enough for this for now.
Laurana started book 8a of the ladybird series today. Recently she read I love you Mary Jane - this appealed to her a lot though the reading level is well below what she is capable of - she read it independently. She is slowly becoming more independent with her reading and is reading things all over the place with more confidence.
My DD is now about halfway through book 9a of Key Words. I am picking out words she gets stuck on to reteach and also to teach new phonics rules that have not yet been covered. She is also reading instructions for all math that we do and also when we do writing she must read it. We did start Reading for the Gifted Student Grade 1 but it was a little too difficult for her still and we started it on a bad day for her so I will probably return to it in a few months time depending how things are going.
It seems my daughter has clicked on sounding words out now as long as I keep silent - she tackled the following words all by herself tonight and she has seen none of them before - “interesting” “collected” and “explode” I have stopped phonics instruction for now although she is not through everything as she is picking up words so fast now that I do not think I will have to teach it all. We will probably finish book 9a over the Easter weekend and then I will wait and see what she picks next (knowing her it will be book 10a though I always offer at least two other what I feel should be more exciting books for her) Does anyone have any ideas on books I could offer her now - she should be able to tackle anything but they need to be high interest and also have less writing than long chapter books on each page (too much writing or too few pictures is still bothering her)
Laurana started getting a bit resistant to reading towards the end of book 9a - I gave her a short break where we read nothing together (I just kept reading to her as always) and then let her read something else. I gave her 5 choices and she choose Androcles and the Lion which she read quite rapidly - she is sounding out words pretty well now but does need a reminder to sound them out else she starts guessing. After that despite giving her some much easier choices she choose to carry on again with book 10a of ladybirds. I am wondering what she will choose when we have finished the entire series as I am not going to buy the b books for her. I suspect we will go slower with books 10a than we did with 9a as she may have been showing some signs of being burnt out after that one and I am not sure why.
It is very common for kids at that reading level to guess the words rather than try to sound them out. General teaching consensus says that if (it isn’t a test or a specific lesson) the word they guess makes sence in the context of the story let them use it and continue on. I tend to pull them up if they get the same word wrong twice though.
After level 10 you probably don’t need leveled stories anymore and can just select interesting stories from the library, new words will still be encountered and the phonics skills and sight word familiarity are already there now. Great work!
H. is still reading an hour a day (Papa’s orders, but he rarely resists and usually enjoys himself), and he is often reading more on his own…over the weekend when I was doing something he came up and announced that he had read 75 pages of one of the Ralph Mouse books. He’s continuing to read (to himself) mostly easier (for him) things. But on Thursday he read two “Flat Stanley” books in a little over an hour, then because he was so proud of himself, I told him he’d get some prize if he read another one in another half-hour, which he did.
He is now into mystery, however. He’s been reading an easy version of Sherlock Holmes (so we recently got two more, the Great Illustrated Classics, wonderful series) as well as a non-fiction book about crime scene science, and writes his own stories (pretty incoherent, unless I help him) about a character he goes on and on about, named “Harry Willman.” Harry Willman has amazing powers, which change from day to day. He has also recently read most of Freddie the Detective, which I think is what got him into detective stories. He’s now regularly reading books I’ve never read myself, like that one.
He also finished both Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Magic. These are books that I picked out strictly based on reviews and their appearance on “best of” lists. He’s liked 'em. He read and then re-read all five of the Henry Huggins books, which are really great. We also listened to them. Now he’s re-reading the Ralph Mouse books. I believe he read all of Little House on the Prairie, keeping ahead of me in the book as I read to him. He wanted me to read it to him after he had read it to himself. I didn’t mind as the whole series richly deserves its status as top classics.
There are other items he’s into lately. He finished the whole “Spiderwick Chronicles” series and is about to start the three-book sequel.
In other news, baby E. has a renewed interest in books (at about the same age H. renewed his interest in books–18 months) and now regularly demands Go Dog Go and Hop On Pop, which were books H. wanted to read when he was this age. He was wowing us today by spelling out simple CVC words in an iPad app. It was some combination of luck and skill but I doubt he’d be able to do this if he had not had lots of experience of seeing CVC words spelled out. Of course he can read lots of simple words, but not phonetically yet, I think. Still, he doesn’t get as many books read to him as H. did. I wonder if a lot of this isn’t my lacking time, but he also doesn’t seem to have as much patience for them as H. had. But E. is very clever, responsive, and funny, a different personality altogether from H’s, who is more logical (except when his imagination is going–and then it’s a never-ending stream of nonsense) and introspective like Papa.
If they’ve been taught with phonics systematically and rigorously, they might not guess so much. H. was so far from ever guessing himself that he would not tolerate any sloppiness on my part–if I got so much as a single letter of (saying “toward” instead of “towards,” for example) he would instantly correct me. This was when he was 2-4 years old. He doesn’t care so much anymore.
Sounds like H is doing well. I am planning to introduce my DD to Ramona Quimby fairly soon though will probably read some of them out loud to her still. She’s still only 4.5 years old so I am not requiring her to read anything alone yet except what we read aloud together - that will probably change once she reaches 5 years old.
Manda if it is grammatically correct and makes sense then I do sometimes let her skip over words or guess. I also have been allowing her to read contractions incorrectly (can’t as cannot, don’t as do not and so on) - she does get them right some of the time and I have shown her how to read them, but she does seem to struggle with this - maybe a grammar lesson in it would help - one day…
However despite allowing this guessing to some extent, if she is stuck I do automatically tell her to sound it out or help her sound it out. It has taken some time but she is now sounding out words without prompting and usually gets them correct even if it is rules she has not covered yet (there are a few I have to still do with her)
I have actually felt from book 5b of that series that she no longer needs the series and I had planned to stop it but then found book 6a at book shop and bought it - she decided to read it and has since asked for the rest of them even though we have many more books she could read - there is something familaiar about those books with her and something that gives her confidence - even if it is just the reading routine we follow with them. I am not sure what it is or why we chooses them as they are not the most exciting reading (although the later ones do get a bit better) I suspect when she stops choosing them (because she is tired of them or because we run out of them) that I will have to teach her to read short chapter books and help her increase her stamina in other ways.
As for my younger daughter (14 months) - she has also been different - she is more interested in word cards than her sister was, but is slower to speak which means I have no idea what she is taking in yet. We are doing LR and flashcards on the wall (while I teach the oldest parts of speech and basic grammar) I plan to start reading bear now as she seems to understand now that a written word stands for something real (looks at her foot when we show the word foot, smiles and waits for Mum to jump when we read jump and so on) She is less interested in being read to than my elder daughter is though recently she will listen to at least half a story - she has always been VERY interested in paging through books by herself and has a slightly more independent streak than the elder had.
Oooh! I see great things in the future of your youngest!
Fair call daddude, a kid who has been drilled in phonics is less likely to guess but only if the level of book/words is not a challenge for their comprehension. If kids are learning sight words faster than we can keep flashing them at them lol Then they often read faster than they can sound out, so they guess. This is more common in children using leveled readers due to the higher sight word count.
I still have to remind my six year old to sound out the words at times rather than guess. :rolleyes:
Funny but I had never thought about it until now. I have never expected my kids to read to themselves or by themselves until they were completely fluent and reading long novels and they asked me for extra reading time. My oldest reads each night alone after our family story time, it’s her choice. She also reads non fiction a lot through out the day, to the point where her school teacher is sending her home with only fiction readers! Lol My middle and younger two just beg for another story endlessly lol
I have no good reason not to expect them to read alone, I just enjoy sharing the books and stories with them.
Tanikit does your daughter use contractions when she speaks? Or does she mostly say both words in full? I have taught kids who don’t use the contractions and they struggle more to read them. This one I wouldn’t be worried about, it’ll fix all by itself over time, as the correction is simpler than the method used now lol
Daddude what were the spiderwick chronicles like? Wondering if I should get them for mine.
My thinking precisely re guessing and reading. That the whole word method leads to guessing is actually a common observation made by phonics advocates. FWIW, H. reads very fast–perhaps faster than me, but then, I’m a very slow reader.
Spiderwick Chronicles? I read a few pages of the first book to him, then he took over. He obviously likes them although he wasn’t obsessive. Myself, I thought they weren’t exactly great literature, and they’re also rather dark. If you’re the kind of parent who avoids original versions of fairy tales because they’re too violent, you might not want a five-year-old reading them. (There were just a couple of passages in Anderson that we skipped over–I read 1/3 of the complete tales to him. H. has an iron-cast stomach/psyche when it comes to scary stuff, nothing seems to faze him.)
I would have been surprised if he wasn’t a fast reader! I would bet he is faster than me, lots of practice at an early age is bound to get results.
personally I don’t see guessing as a problem early on, provided at least one reading strategy is used to get an answer. Whether that Is phonics, just looking at the first sounds, looking at the picture or grabbing a word from memory. So long as it makes sence of the book it’s still reading. Obviously within reason, reading for accuracy is something that will naturally increase with experience and exposure. I still occasionally have my oldest read aloud to me, so she can learn to pronounce some new words. ( ok it’s me checking up on her lol ) My two learning to read now ( at what point do we stop saying learning to read and decide they can read? :biggrin: ) are both quite creative and certainly not perfectionists. They will both guess away, my serious Virgo would always sound out every word she didn’t know. I wonder how your second child will differ. You already see the differences, with systematic phonics instruction it will be interesting to see if he guesses at all.
So spiderwick isn’t for us yet. We do read the dark fairy tales but as a comparative study, I doubt they would survive a dark novel, bunch of sensitive flowers that they are :rolleyes:
The E.B. White books are great for introducing chapter books. Started with Charlotte’s Web (watched the film starring Dakota Fanning), then Stuart Little, and now we’ve started The Trumpet of the Swan.
We’d go through a chapter, or part of a chapter per night. I would begin to read while underlining the sentences, until my daughter wanted to take over. Then she’d read a paragraph or two.
I don’t want to turn this into a phonics - sight word debate (we have threads for that and I believe in both methods preferably together) but I think BOTH phonics and sight word readers get to a stage where they must guess - they are guessing based on a number of things:
When a child uses ALL the different techniques it will result in better reading with more accuracy - they should mentally be able to use ALL of them to check themselves: I think that word is “happy” - it makes sense, it is phonetically correct, it agrees with my grammar (I need an adjective there and happy would fit) and it sounds like a word I have heard before, not like some nonsense. Using all techniques also encourages comprehension.
My DD has finished book 10a of Ladybird and is now reading Peter’s Good Idea.
My almost 6 year old is reading the Wizard of Oz trilogy. He is on book two now. He’s read almost all of the Andrew Lange Fairy books. For Sciency type reading he is also reading the Burgess Bird and animal books.
My 2 year old is mainly reading bob books, but is really starting to take off with fluency.