Reading Options for Beginning Readers

It really is a great problem to have—not enough books for a voracious reader. But, the problem isn’t easy to solve. That’s why, when I noticed my son only had two more books left in his kindergarten curriculum, my heart skipped a beat and I panicked for just a second. Then I remembered some of the great reading books I have around the house that I’ll be able to use.

But I got to thinking that I’m probably not the only one encountering this problem. So I thought I’d share a few suggestions for your beginning readers.

  • First, though it seems very obvious, check your own home library. You might be surprised what your little reader will be able to pick up and read. My son constantly surprises me with the sight words and advanced phonics sounds that he can pick up simply from the context of the story and pictures. For instance, with very little help, he tackled Are You My Mother? the other day. I was in shock. So definitely check what you have before buying something new.
  • Next, I love the A Beka little readers. They are very reasonably priced and the perfect starter readers. For K4, purchase Little Books 1-10 and Little Owl Books set of 8.  For K5, the Basic Phonics Readers set is available.
  • Another awesome set of readers is the Reading for Fun Enrichment Library of over 55 little books. Look for it used. I was blessed to have inherited the set from my mom, the same set I used as a child. Talk about a valuable investment!
  • I’ve also read of a number of homeschoolers who have used the Bob Books and loved them, though I have not seen them personally. You might also check to see if your local library carries these titles.

My last suggestions are actually some books that I just found through Usborne Books. When the Very First Reading Series arrived at our house, you would have thought it was Christmas.

My son doing a "happy" dance

These readers are extremely cool. The whole concept is that the parent and child share the reading experience. Here’s how…

Sample spread from Book 1 of the Usborne Very First Reading Series - Pirate Pat

 

The series includes 15 hardback books that progressively become more difficult and have the child reading a little more in each book. By the end of the series, the child is reading the whole story. The set comes with a separate parent’s guide, as well as instruction and comprehension games within each book. The Very First Reading website also includes additional parent resources.

The one down-side is that the books are not sold individually, which means that this set is an investment.

But another great option for kindergarten/first grade readers are the Easy Readers from Usborne. I’ve gotten a couple of these for my kids, and they have been a huge hit. The books are paperback with fun illustrations and even fold out pages. And what excites my son the most is the feeling that he is reading a real book all by himself.

I’d also love to know what books you use with your little reader, as my son might be reading us out of house and homeschool very soon!

Note: I am an Usborne consultant, because I just loved the books too much to afford them any other way! The links to Usborne books will link you to my sales site.

Nigeria, Part 2

We’ve been wrapping our study in Nigeria, and I wanted to share a few of our highlights.

During the last part of our first week, we finished our country and flag notebooking pages.

Coloring the country of Nigeria

 

Coloring the Flag of Nigeria

 

In addition to learning where Nigeria is on a map, we studied their flag. The green represents the agriculture (“farming”) and the white stands for unity (“lots of different people coming together as one country”).

In week two, we cover culture and missions. In addition to our prayer cards, we read a couple of pages from Children Just Like Me and complete a notebooking page. For the little one, I have a fantastic sticker dolly dressing book from Usborne. The book features people from around the world with sticker clothing to match. The little one gets to find the outfit that fits the person from the country we are studying (with quite a bit of help, but it still intrigues her).

The countries don’t always match up with our study, but when we do get to pull out this activity, it’s a big hit.

Then, we finish our second week with a missionary story. This week, we read about Mary Slessor, a missionary to the cannibals of Africa (thankfully, the story was about her work with orphans, confronting the false belief in “evil spirits”, and showing the African women the truth of God).

I really appreciated the missionary book we read from, Ten Girls Who Changed the World. At the end of each short story, there is a little discussion section that ends with a sample prayer to pray. The discussion and prayer was about allowing God to use our personalities to serve Him, and boldly standing up for what is right.

Do they comprehend everything we cover? Probably not. But I’m a firm believer in over-estimating rather than under-estimating what they will pick up. And what I cover today is laying a foundation for covering the same concepts more thoroughly in the future.

Next Stop, Nigeria! (day 1 & 2)

We officially wrote our “exit date” on our passports for South Africa, concluding our 2 week tour, and began our new study of Nigeria this week.

Day 1, we reviewed our continents/oceans song and our Southern Africa song before beginning our new song on the countries of West Africa.

“Niger, Mali, and Mauritania, Senegal, Gambia,

Guinea-Bassau, Guinea, Sierra-Leone, Liberia,

Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso. Ghana, Togo, Benin, Nigeria,

and the islands of Cape Verde.

Hundreds of different ethnic groups are living in West Africa.”

(from Geography Songs)

Next, we officially stamped our passports with the flag sticker of Nigeria.

On Day 2, we had a blast learning to use our atlas and discovering the new geography terms for Nigeria. Our Essential Atlas of the World has a topographical map and key that we learned to use, and then we turned to our book Geography A to Z to find the definition for the topography terms that were used in our atlas. “Savannah,” “plateau,” “gulf,” and “cape” were the terms for this week (cape and plateau are review). I was thrilled to see my books working so well together.

(Sometimes, it’s a little scary to piece together your own curriculum because you don’t know how well everything will fit together. I feel greatly relieved!)

After reading our terms, I took the kids back to the atlas and had them find all of the capes along the coastline of western Africa. It was thrilling to see that even the little one was very quick to find them all, including ones that her brother didn’t find. Both of them had a lot of fun, and it was a terrific lesson in maps and atlases.

Next up, some notebooking pages on the country and the flag of Nigeria, as well as some fun fables from the land.