book recommendations to read at home with reception DD

[tomhazard]

DD is in reception. She seems to be quite a good reader and has gone through the following levels:

Yellow, Blue, Green and now she is on a level they call Silver. I've googled this and it doesn't look like the usual pattern of colours so perhaps the school do their own thing a bit?
Anyway, she is desperate to read more at home than the book that comes home from school each day. We've been through the Songbirds books and I also bought a collection of Biff and Chip books that went up to level 5 which she's also finished.

Can anyone recommend some books I could buy to supplement her reading at school, that corresponds with this reading level silver.....

Thank you!

[nordicwannabe]

The joy of her reaching this level is that you don't need to restrict yourself to reading scheme books

If she loves books, she probably now prefers chapter books for bedtime etc, but I'm sure you still have millions of her picture books - the likes of Julia Donaldson, Hairy Maclary, Mog etc. These should all be accessible to her for reading herself now, and she'll get a kick out of reading old favourites for herself.

[tomhazard]

thank you! Yes I read her chapter books for bedtime now - we have all the old favourites in picture books yes so I can give her these to read - she'd definitely be able to.

Would she be able to do the 'easy reader' books that I've seen in charity shops etc? Like the horrid Henry ones (but no those!)

[reluctantbrit]

I would go to the library and let her loose. I found that they progress fast and still memorise lots of text easily so re-reading books wasn’t an option for us. Even with the cheap charity ship books I didn’t want to spend money when the library gave us the same books for free.

[Tomorrowillbeachicken]

Happy family books
Mr men/little miss
Dr Seuss
The Hachette early readers (including horrid Henry) are about level 9/10/11 which is gold/white/lime/ ks2 Brown in ORT.
The other option is to read picture books with her as they have more complex language as they are made for adults to read to children

[Tomorrowillbeachicken]

The best thing to do what be the try to find the ort/book band level for the books she’s reading atm as sites like this can show real books in relation to book bands:
www.badgerlearning.co.uk/banded-reading-boxes.html

[user789653241]

Local library and charity shops were where we got most of the books.
Once they reached a level they can decode words easily, there's nothing stopping them to try out any books they fancy. Electronic dictionary was very useful, it made it really easy to look up the words you don't know.

[GrimSqueaker]

Mine could do the lower level easy reader stuff about this point in reception (there's like three different coloured levels of it - blue are easier than the others). Horrid Henry was still a bit beyond her by then (I have no personal objections to the books - the cartoon's shite though but I know others differ). By the start of Y1 we'd got onto Horrid Henry and the sodding Rainbow Fairies and the like. No idea what book bands she was on though as school were terrible at moving her up and made her trudge through every book on a level before moving up to trudge through every book on the next level and then avoiding changing her book as the next set were kept in the Y1 classroom which required effort to change it. When we moved schools for Y1 they put her on green and quickly tweaked it up to orange within a couple of weeks so probably about a similar level to what you're saying.

It's a children's atlas that's absolutely fascinating both of mine (I have another in reception now) at the moment - just called "First Atlas"... but they have just done a global week in school. Every time I look one or the other of them has the atlas out.

[GrimSqueaker]

Other random tip apart from charity shops (I've got a lot of books from there) and the Amazon used sellers... Poundland quite often get batches of the easy reader books in.

[tomhazard]

Thanks everyone I've got some good ideas from this - I'll let her loose in the library and maybe have a charity shop dig too. The world of primary education is a bit of a mystery to me/ not helped by the fact that 'silver' doesn't seem to be a standard colour on the reading Rainbow anywhere else!

[brilliotic]

I can imagine that perhaps in your school they don't really let children go beyond green in YR and so have introduced an extra 'holding' colour to keep those children occupied who have finished green. Then when she starts Y1 she might be put back on the 'tree' (starting with orange) until she exhausts what they deem appropriate for Y1 or infants.

Perhaps (this is me being optimistic) these 'silver' books are especially chosen books to be a bit more challenging than green, but remaining at an interest level / content suitable for 4 and 5 year olds?

FWIW I was ok with the fact that they didn't let DS go beyond 'KS1 books' (up to lime) in KS1. Even so, he got to read books about WW2 and evacuating children and such at age 5. The books don't just increase in difficulty, they also are designed to be of interest/relevant to older children.
As DS moved into KS2, he was moved to KS2 books, and soon to the Y6 books (at age 7). He can read them perfectly fine, but some he finds terribly dull (pre-teen girls with crushes on TV stars...), some he finds sincerely scary, and some of the non-fiction are completely beyond any context he could relate to.

I kind of wish they'd introduce their own level of books with a higher degree of challenge, but still at a younger interest level, rather than just move him up the bands. But then again at this stage school books are only a very minor element of his reading, so it doesn't really matter.

[Tomorrowillbeachicken]

If you are gonna buy try here too www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/qs_home_tbp?storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&langId=100