My daughter Chloe is 3 years old now, turning 4… her favorite is Little red riding hood,…other than that… hmm, other story of Princesses and Barbie… she enjoys watching the illustrations while her mum or I is reading the story… It has been our everyday routine to read to her that book… :rolleyes:
We are going through Russian classical poetry now with E (3 yo) and Russian folk stories with A (1.5 yo) – it’s been a fun discovery journey.
Right now we just reading and re-telling stories, talking about them, eventually we want to start reciting some poetry pieces
We are now reading ordinary picture books: How did you make that web; Amanda’s butterfly;
Paper Bears and the Golden Key; and she read Good morning, Good night to her sister independently.
Skylark - reciting poetry sounds like a good idea. I think I need to get my DD learning some things off by heart too.
All three of my kids are currently OBSESSED with the magic school bus series. ( scholstic) The books thankfully come in two different levels ( at least) so my oldest reads the novels and my middle reads the story books and my youngest helps me read the story books. 
This week it seems to be skeletons and more bees! I think it’s time we went to see the bee hive again.
They watch the movies endlessly ( love YouTube!) and can all explain light spectrum and the rainbow, digestion, beehives, rain forests, wind…amazing learning in them. Anyway if you haunt tried them yet, do!
She’s reading more books independently now though still books well below her reading level and much shorter than the ones we read together:
The Bravest Dog Ever: The true story of Balto
Nate the Great (this is also below her reading level, so she flew through it but she enjoys having some easy reading)
A Puppy for Annie
My 2.5 year old loves her Pete The Cat books by Eric Litwin. Can’t get enough of them. She also loves the Little Quack books.
James is almost 2.5. I read to him about an hour a day. He is a sight word reader, (phonics isn’t completely clicking yet) and his reading ability is higher than his speech. He is/was speech delayed and is improving rapidly. He can read mostly words, and sentences up to 3 words. Beyond that and he is overwhelmed.
I read to him.
Lots of Little Golden Books. The collections are very good value. Animal Tales, Farm Tales, Friendly Tales etc… We read the whole collection in one sitting.
Anything by Iza Trapaini. I caught him the other day reading “resting in the sun”. It is the last line of the Itsy Bitsy Spider.
The Usborne Stories for Girls (Boys) He says he likes the pink book better than the blue book. Trying to locate affordable versions of the Usborne Classic stories for Girls (Boys)
The Big Blue Beginner Book… He just started to like this book recently.
And the most surprising is an old set of encyclopedias for children initially printed in the '70s. Sure, the content is a bit dated. But they read well and learning about the concept of pollution is the same to him right now. All he got from it right now was “yucky air”.
Stuart Murphy’s Math Start Series level 1 series. We are using them for math. They cover a lot of basic concepts. Sorting, patterns, amount, skip counting and more. Sadly I bought them, and he is surpassing them too quickly 
I might need to go to level 2.
James now “reads” a book to me before nap and night time. Most are one word concept books, but he is using them to improve his speech mostly. He also has been slogging through the Preschool Prep Sight word readers and a few other miscellaneous High Frequecny readers that I mostly write myself.
She’s now reading books in the car anytime we go anywhere - since these books are independent reading (I cannot help her at all since I am driving) I choose books well below her level and pack the car with them - the 16 month old loves diving into them too and the two of them spend any car trips reading and “reading.” Its cute to watch.
These are the ones we have been reading together:
Wombat goes Walkabout
Meet the Molesons
Rumplestiltskin
If anyone’s interested, we put out an ebook this weekend thats phonics based - its the first in what hopefully will be a series. It’s free today if anyone’s interested and is .99 normally. http://www.amazon.com/Penny-early-reader-phonics-ebook/dp/B0087B5OQY/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1340048603&sr=1-1&keywords=penny+and+jack - Please let me know if you have any opinions on the font size (does it need to be bigger) or if I should have a version with font on a different page without the picture.
My son is reading everything in sight - its amazing how quickly they take off. I think he’s at a second grade level and we started with phonics 1 yr ago using DadDude’s cards. My son is 4, and he’s started reading in Spanish now too. Very exciting!
Congratulations! LDSmom. We downloaded it and read it strait away. My son loved it! He had a giggle and even read me some of the words.
That boy is starting to drive me nuts! He knows so many more words than he will actually read to me! I keep catching him out. He will shout out a word from a utube clip, or read a word on TV, if I am too slow reading the page he will read it ahead of me. He just won’t do it on demand yet 
I think the font size is great ( we were using an iPad), I reckon some of the mums with younger kids will want words and pictures separate. I suppose if you are using an iPad you could increase the word size by zooming in and thus the picture would be gone from site
Anyway can’t wait til the next one is ready
Thank you for your kind words, so glad your son enjoyed it. It’s amazing the amount of work that goes into something as small as a 10 page book! Jack in the story is based on a Siberian Huskey my family had while I was growing up and he really would pull us around on sleds during the winter time here in Utah. Such fun memories!
Great little book again! I would personally like the words on seperate page as I know my daughter looks at pictures even if I point at words with my finger.
We are still loving our My first steps books. We read My fisrt steps to math and now we are reading My first steps to reading.
Should I read ,for example, the letter D as “d” or “di” please? I guess is “di”
I read them to my child with the phonetic sound, but if you use the letter names that is fine too - depends what you want to teach.
My DD is now reading The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl - its one of his easier books and she is enjoying it though only reading a few pages a day. I am reading her Pippi Longstocking and she is enjoying the humour in these books.
Oh I LOVE pippi long stocking! My kids dint enjoy my very beautiful picture book version of it until AFTER they watched it as a movie. Now they love it as much as me!
I use both ah bee see and a, buh keh. I figured he needed to know both so i taught both. It worked. I say this is the letter A, it represents ( or it makes) the sound ah in the word apple. This way if we hit a word like city I have a way to explain it easily. It probably took a little more repitition than just doing one at a time but time is on our side
My kids and I are doing a group read of The Far Away Tree Stories. I got a beautiful big book version with lovely pictures on most pages. It’s such a great story and lovely language. Great for those multi age child families! Sometimes I read, sometime either of the girls read it. Jaykob gets a crack at each chapter title ( phonics practice :laugh: ) anyway I highly recommend this series ( it’s usually 2 or 3 novels) but definately get the large picture book version. Love it.
I still love the Magic Faraway Tree books and also The Wishing Chair Ones - will maybe read them to DD1 again some time. Will try and get hold of the Pippi Longsticking movie - but perhaps will leave it til after I have finished the books with her.
She’s reading book 11c of Ladybird now - Books are exciting - (she is still picking these books despite me giving her numerous what I feel are more exciting books) Nonetheless this book has given me the chance to teach her the -tion and -sion phonics with a lot of emphasis on vocabulary too. Because the book discusses different types of reading material it is interesting to find which types she seems like she will most enjoy and which for her are less exciting.
My DS received his Baby Sigining Time board books today and loved them. These books go along with the 4 baby signing time DVDs. The type is large, they are board books and the sign review is located in the back of each book. He is doing pretty well reading the words he knows the sign for and we will work on the other words.
We are reading all kinds of books, unsure of what level they are - but we recently went through the list of kindergarten readers at the library and checked out Hi Fly Guy, and my son loved it! It’s an easy “chapter book” and is a fun story. I was so excited to learn that this is the first book in a series of 11, so next time we are at the library we will check out some more in the set!
We are really jumping around in reading level now but I find this is necessary - for enjoyment and also to increase fluency (her fluency has improved greatly suddenly and I am not sure why but she is reading with expression and enjoying the books more) as well as teaching the more advanced phonics (multi syllable, prefixes and suffixes etc) and increasing her stamina.
She read Owl at Home and is now reading East of the Sun, West of the Moon.
We finished Pippi Longstocking though I still have two more of them so will go back to that later. I read some Beatrix Potter tonight and she has requested more (it has been a long time since we last read these stories and her understanding seems to have jumped quite a bit - my 18 month old enjoyed the Tale of Benjamin Bunny though I think she just liked the pictures of the rabbits)
My youngest child is now 1 month younger than my oldest was when I started this post so it is very interesting for me to watch what is happening - my youngest has read the following so far:
Ladybird Keywords Book 1b (we couldn’t find 1a when I started her on them - we have since found it and she read it independently)
Ladybird Keywords Book 2a
Ladybird Keywords Book 2b
I See Sam Books 1-5 (she does a new book daily at the moment)
Her sight word vocabulary is actually less then my eldest’s was at this age and she seems to need more repetitions than my older child to remember a word, however she is able to blend and work out simple cvc phonics by herself. She is still working a lot though with beginning sounds despite knowing to sound out the entire word. She seems able to handle longer passages of reading than my eldest did at the same age.
My 6 year old this year has read a number of books. Some that I remember are:
Sable
Pioneer Cat
Some of Harry Potter Book 2 (we put this away as her stamina was not great enough to get enough out of it - I would prefer she can read an entire chapter in one sitting before trying this again and they are quite long chapters - she is able to read it, but there are other issues to consider with this at this age)
The Children of Noisy Village
B is for Betsy
The Invisible Dog
I still read aloud to both children daily from fiction and non fiction and my youngest “reads” to me from anything by running her finger under the words and saying whatever she thinks fits the picture - and then yelling in delight when she knows a word or can work one out.