My first grader learned to read because of this book

Great little books. I purchased these for my 30-month-old daughter after she learned all the letters and their sounds. I read each little book to her, and then she "reads" it back to me, using memory, the visual prompts, and the letters to try to recall each word. It's really exciting to her to be able to read to Mommy and Daddy, and I see the beginning reading skills developing as she reads and rereads each book. More and more often she is able to guess the word based on the letters rather than looking at the picture. The little stories are very simple, but she likes them, and the art is full color and much more appealing than the Bob Books. There is one little book, "It Is Funny," that we have had to remove from the set, because the first page is a picture of a girl riding a unicycle with the text "A funny bike." and it drives her crazy because she insists that a unicycle is not a bike, not even a funny bike, which of course is true since bi- means 2. Anyway, our toddler's quirks aside, we have been very happy with this set and will order the A-level readers once she masters these. Some other reviewers objected to some of the words in the little readers, such as the word pepperoni in the reader about pizza. This type of reader teaches certain words through repetition, so in that reader, each page says, "We get" and shows the family buying pizza ingredients--"We get crust, we get tomatoes, etc." So the child is learning the words We and get, and is expected to guess the other words based on the picture. My toddler has never struggled with the word pepperoni because she's familiar with the word, and she has the picture and the letter P to remind her. If you want to teach strictly phonics-based reading where the children sound out each word and don't use visual cues, get the Bob Books instead. But personally I think these are more fun and more appealing to children, especially young children, and the careful phonics instruction can be left for later.

I figure this review will be rather long. So for any desperate parent scrolling through countless reviews on countless similar items , I will do you the favor and stress how much this book set impressed me! If you have a kindergartner or first grader who is really STRUGGLING with reading then PLEASE trust that this PURCHASE could help. **Skip to the last (2) paragraphs for summary of the material ......or read on for details:** My daughter never attended preschool. She entered kindergarten struggling with barely being able to recite her ABC’s but would NOT cooperate with any of my many approaches and efforts to assist her through practicing, learning through play, incorporating letter board puzzles and alphabet toys into her collection of toys, etc. I am currently majoring in early childhood education, where I had learn different techniques to encourage kids to learn but most of these techniques focus on learning through discovery and what is of interest to the child. As a matter of fact, my teachers even stress not to force reading on children who do not display in eagerness or readiness to read. Following this advice, made beginning kinder a total nightmare. After the teacher had spoke with me several times after school, to let me know that my daughter was not at the same level as the other students, and the first of the parent teacher conferences...I knew that I was willing to throw everything I learned in my textbooks to hell! I wanted to give any advice the teacher was offering a try, to help reinforce their daily lessons, no matter how much my daughter tried to avoid it. Still, when I would see progress in one area it would seem she would do poorly in another or have trouble doing reviews on previous lessons. I felt defeated. Fortunately, I ended up seeing some light at the end of the tunnel when a one on one program for extra help with her reading was set up at her school . This helped her tremendously, I mean within a week she was WILLING to work with me, which was really all I needed. A teacher would pull her from class and sit outside with her and go over little books that would later get sent home with a worksheet to complete and turn in the next day, twice a week. Her progress made leaps and bounds and her excited teacher didn’t withhold her excitement at our very last conference of the year. But, summer was busy, and though we have maybe 50 children’s books that I would read to her at night, none were easy enough for her to read to me or on her own. I tried a subscription to the “I can read..” club where they would send three books a month that were supposed to be easy enough for her to learn to read, but I hated it . I even subscribed to the Dr Seuss equivalent of it, and though it was better, it’s still just wasn’t what I was looking for . First grade had just started, and I realized that the program either was not continuing or has not started yet and my daughter needed to practice her reading, A LOT. On back to school night I looked at the desk next to her where another’s student ‘book’, that the students were all working on, stood out. It seemed a lot more advanced than the one sitting on my daughter’s desk. A wave of emotions hit me and I hopped on Amazon to find help. And boy, did I! :) ** These easy readers were l like the ones she would take home last year, but BETTER. They are small square books similar to the size of the others but these ones are in color. The worksheets that she would take home with each book are basically the ones provided in the little workbook that comes included, each with a page dedicated to one of the stories in the set. They are really simple worksheets but they really do help to reinforce the site words which is crucial. So please do not skip this simple step if you have a young one struggling like mine. Also, there are tips for parents to utilize at the end of each book. I will include a picture of the simple instruction which I followed but with an extra step in between, where I would read a page and she would read a page. I think that made it four times we went over the book in one night but they are really quick. Though it may seem tedious to repeat it, I believe that this was crucial, four our experience. And, I made sure to only do one book. Even though after we finished she asked which book we were going to do next, I did not allow her to think of this set has something to race through with a goal to get to the end. Rather let her find mastery of the sight words, during the process. If you would like to go over more than one book a day, which we will likely do on weekends , I just suggest doing them at different times of the day, not one after the other . Especially since kids can only really concentrate on one thing for 15 minutes before getting tired of it. I did not want my daughter to end on a bad note, especially the first day I was introducing this. Oh and I let her choose which of the blue books she wanted to start with, which I assumed were the first to start with because (which I may have been wrong) they seemed to have the easiest sight words. That was my attempt to encourage her excitement, and I suppose it helped well enough. ** I had just received this set, so I have only gone over one book and one worksheet with my daughter , but I knew I had to come leave a review as the school year is just starting and there may be others out there looking for help like I was. I could literally see the progress already. We went over the book last night and this morning while she was getting dressed and I was doing her hair I asked her what were the site words we learned last night and she recited them to me . Then I asked her to spell them and she spelled them without looking at a book or really thinking about it at all . I dropped her to school and hopped onto write this review . Look if your kid is a great reader congratulations this set is not for you. Other reviewer‘s left things in their reviews that left me a bit irritated that they would not take into consideration that there are kids, yes even in first grade, that these books would be of great help to. But las I have said, these books are for kids struggling to grasp reading, not for those who can already read well.