Friday, January 20, 2012

Learning to Read.

I have a very curious 4-year old.  Right now, he wants to know what every.single.word on every.single.sign we pass says.  He's always been in to letters, words and reading - we had a whole birthday party about that - so he's old enough now to try to start reading some of those letters and words on his own. 

I have heard many good things about the Bob Books so I got him the Beginning Readers Set.  In a nutshell, these books are set up to build on top of each other.  The first book in the set contains only 4 letters ( M, A, T and S), which are letters most preschoolers can sound out.  New sounds are added in each subsequent book until they can read words containing all letters of the alphabet. 


The only problem?  The books are pretty boring.  The Bug lost interest immediately. 

My mom found the Now I'm Reading series at the teacher store and we are hooked!  Created by an elementary school teacher, this set of 10 books uses patterned/repetitive text and picture clues that really help The Bug figure out what the word is.  It's pretty impressive (to me at least!) that he can figure out it says "my feet are for kicking" just by knowing what sounds letters make and seeing the picture.


PLUS - there's stickers!  Every toddlers dream come true.  Each time they read the book, they place a sticker in the designated spot in the book.  (And maybe mine gets a piece of candy...)

No, I'm not one of those moms who thinks my child is a genius nor do I want him to read before everyone else does.  I just think these are a great way to keep him curious about reading and also give me a break from story hour every once in a while!

Have you heard of Now I'm Reading?  When did your kids start reading?

3 comments:

  1. One of my sons too loved letters and was interested in reading early on. I love the "Hooked On Phonics" programs. Both my boys went into Kindergarten reading! Now if we could just find a program to work on handwriting!

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  2. have u seen the Leapfrog Letter Factory Video and the Reading Factory one? Those helped a ton, we ran into the same problem with the BOB books, great premise but too boring. It's wonderful that he is doing so well!

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  3. Thanks so much for posting this. My son is really interested now and I bought BOB books which he does well with, but I also agree with you. Will have to check these out!

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