Best books for learning to read

[PuffinShop]

Hi, my daughter is 6 this summer and hasn't had any formal literacy instruction yet as we live in a country where school starts at 6. She'll be formally learning to read in her other language when she starts primary school in the autumn, but I was thinking I'd do some work on English alongside what she learns at school as obviously the phonics are somewhat different for her two languages.

She can already read and write a little bit just from what she has picked up from exposure and informal learning at home and at preschool, but I'm not a teacher and don't really know any of the theory behind learning literacy skills, so I suppose I need something that is parent-friendly so I don't teach her bad habits?

Her level at the moment is that she can slowly read words that have basic sounds (like 'cat'). She can recognise and write all the letters in both alphabets and knows the typical sounds they make by themselves but she hasn't learnt any two-letter sounds apart from 'th' or how 'hate' changes the sounds from 'hat' for example.

What are UK primary schools using these days? I expect she will learn quite quickly when she gets some proper instruction as she's clearly developmentally ready, but her skills are obviously not the same as a typical nearly-6-year-old who has been in primary school for over a year.

I would buy an online program like Reading Eggs to cover phonics systematically unless you want to research and teach it yourself.

Apps like reading eggs and teach your monster to read.
I also bought the Biff Chip Kipper series. You can get multipacks from the larger bookshops with 6-8 books for each level. Or just go with what you have. DD (same situation as yours) went from stumbling through level 1 to reading Harry Potter in 6 months plus learning to read in her school language.

Biff, Chip, Kipper are very widely used in the UK and much of the vocabulary in them is phonics based, with the necessary common exception words.

DS1 had a speech delay and at 3 I bought the earlier levels of Peter and Jane. They were based on sight reading and learning whole words, but what was useful for DS was the repetition and gramatical rearranging of the sentences. I wouldn't rely on them for learning to read, but they are a useful supplement for learning sentence structure alongside phonics based books.

Usbourne do some good phonics based books too like Fat Cat

Songbirds series is a good phonics based series of books. We bought a box set for not too much £££.

Also Reading Eggs (paid) which I prefer to teach your monster to read (free). Used a lot of reading eggs during lockdown.

I remember Biff, Chip and Kipper from my own childhood! I didn't know they were still in use.

Brilliant, thanks for all the tips