Books like Julia Donaldson Songbirds?

[slev]

DS (5) is a really enthusiastic reader and often wants to do more than the reading book he brings home from school (especially during weekends and holidays when he doesn't get reading homework). I see no reason to discourage this so have bought the Songbirds series to read with him at home (at school he's using Bug Club and the Big Cat series, so the Songbirds ones seem to complement that, plus he likes the stories/pictures).

However, he completed most of those over half term and I'm finding that if we repeat the same books, he's remembering the story, rather than actually reading the words - it's fine if we leave a big gap but with only 12 books in the level, we're coming across the same one too frequently. He's in no way ready to move on to the next level - he finds red (level 2?) fairly easy so I've started some of the yellow level with him, which are a nice balance of words he can easily recognise/sound out and some which are new to him.

Can anyone recommend anything in a similar style which I could add to our collection?

Floppy Phonics

reading chest

Reading chest - thank you! I was sure I'd seen something like that but couldn't remember what it was called. Will give it a go and see how we get on.

We went to the library and raided their 'start to read' shelf.

Jelly and bean

www.jellyandbean.co.uk

My daughters school used Dandelion readers.

Ruth Miskin books are decodable as well

At this stage I would look at the library and check charity shops. They go through the levels at such a high speed and remember the books by heart very soon.

I found TheBookPeople is a good source for sets but I would see what I can get without spending money first.

Have you looked on www.oxfordowl.co.uk there are over 250 e books which are free.

Definitely the library. Some of the books in the start to read section should be colour coded to the same colours as school eg pink, red, yellow which makes it easy. Other books can then be compared to the 'right' level for similarity of content.

I wouldn't buy many new level 2-3-4 books as the kids tent to only read it a couple of times.

In addition to the suggestions above - I'd look at the picture books that you must have. He can probably read a lot of them and you can help with the words that are tricky.

Also - at the library look for Usborne First Reading series. They are great books - nice pictures and interesting series.

You can even look for specific books at your desired Book Bands:

www.usborne.com/downloads/book-bands/urp-book-bands-nc3.pdf

"tend to"

Thanks for the advice. We have tried the library but anything which isn't a board book is lumped together by author rather than level (the equivalent of the start to read shelf covers about 4-9 years), so very difficult to pick out books at the right level - I've found a few but it takes a while.

The suggestion with the picture books we've already got - that's effectively what we've been doing while we try and come up with another solution and it does work quite well - we get him to read certain words to us. But again, he knows most of the books by heart (he's a creature of habit!).

I've signed up to Reading Chest this morning and will give it a go - easy enough to cancel if I decide it's not working and better than spending lots of books that don't work for us/only get read once. I suspect we'll probably end up doing a combination of everything but it's always good to pick other people's brains!

We bought these for dd to read at home. She loves fairy stories so these are ideal and they have some moshi monsters/peppa/harry and the dinosaurs in there too. The easiest books (red) that they call ladybird level 1 are equivalent to level 4 of the oxford reading tree levels I think. They were a bit too difficult at first but we read them between us and now she can read some on her own.