Short Stories for a 5 year old

[Elk]

dd2 is in reception and loves reading. She has read loads of the rainbow fairies,some Roald Dahl, Dick king-Smith and Anne Fine.

What I am looking for is some shorter stories for her to read out loud. She is finding the chapter books quite long for reading out loud as she likes to do at least a chapter at a time. She is still quite young and I think would prefer to be able to read a complete story.

Also, she does a lot of reading to herself, normally a book a night before she goes to sleep. I wonder if I should be checking to see how much she understands of what shes reading or if I should just relax and leave her to it on the basis she's got this far by herself.

I hope all that makes sense.

So nobody has any ideas?

Try the Animal Farm books by Michael Morpurgo? Also proper Paddington stories.

Personally I wouldn't check understanding when she's reading at bedtime - it's for pleasure & relaxation.

The Winnie the Witch chapter books are quite short, and IIRC each chapter is a stand alone story (do check though as its a while since I've seen them).

The Milly Molly Mandy books and also (more modern!) Anna Hibiscus books are both a stand alone story for each chapter, but the chapters are longer, maybe too much for her to read in one go?

I used to chat to my dd about the stories that she was reading at that stage, just about the plot, whether she'd enjoyed them etc - a lot of them were my old favourites anyway, so it was a nice thing to do :)

hi what about these Books:
Read at Home Complete Collection - 31 Books
I use this with my son, whose in year 1, and I found these very useful, especially because they use the Oxford reading tree books @ his school.Te books have 5 levels,each one with six storybooks!!!!

www.thebookpeople.co.uk/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/qs_product_tbp?storeId=10001&catalogId=10051&langId=100&productId=184091

DS (5) is in yr1 and he has recently got into reading the topsy & tim books....

Have you looked in the library? (Sorry, supposing there still is one near you) Ours has shelves of quite short readers for all different levels; she'll probably out-grow them very quickly at her rate.

There are some pretty good anthologies of stories - the Kingfisher Treasury of Stories for Five Year Olds, the Puffin Book of Stories for Five Year Olds, Magical Stories for Six Year Olds etc. The names sound rather prosaic, but the stories are anything but, and tend to be well-chosen classics.

I second the idea of the library. My ds reads 3 or 4 short books every night. In order to ensure he understands them and is reading them properly to himself I tend to get out 10-20 out at a time, mostly early reader type books which are a little bit too easy for him. It means that he can read them to himself and I dont feel that I need to check whether he understands everything. I think that way his confidence is boosted a little too as he reads the trickier books with me as part of his homework and then gets to free read the easier on his own. We have the ORT 31 book set that star linked to and he will quite happily read those - though to be honest he would probably read anything like that!

Princesses
Fairy tales
Monsters

They are three books of short stories but there are lotsmore on the same site.

I sell these and can give a discount so let me know if you like them. I don't want to post my details because I don't want to break any rules!

I loved Dr. Suess books at that age (still do) and for reading they are perfect, short and can be read all in one go. Plus they are fun and the illustrations are awesome. My DD loves them too- passed all mine down to her and my DS before her.

Little Miss or Mr Men books. My 5 year old son loves them

My Naughty Little Sister??

I second the Puffin book of short stories for 5 year olds.

ISBN 9780140374582

Hi, I am a mum who loves to read aloud too and I have just published my first story on Kindle: It is a 10 minutes' story to be read to 5 to 10 year olds. Try it and tell me if you like it!
www.amazon.co.uk/Elephant-House-Children-short-stories/dp/B004W0C8Y0
If you haven't got a kindle, it is available for free on this great site:
www.abctales.com/user/diane