Isn't this book too babyish, even for reception?

[Comingroundthemountain]

So dd started reception two weeks ago. I know they are still getting to know the kids and their abilities. Last week dd was sent home with The Scarecrows' Wedding as her book to read at home - we all enjoyed it and read it many times. This week she has been sent home with The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We've been reading this since she was about 6 months old and she knows it verbatim - so she 'reads' it to me except I know she is not reading because she gets the odd word in the wrong order or issues out word like 'and'. Now I know that the point is they learn to read so need books that are simpler to read than they are to understand, but is it reasonable to think this one is way too simple and also that she will not be able to learn to read with a book she already knows more or less off by heart? And what do I write as my comment in her reading diary?

Although I suspect the OP's school could have been a lot clearer in communicating its expectations to parents.

Sadly I agree the practice of sending home lists of words to learn because books aren't matched to learning won't lie down and die.

I'm interested - can you be explicit about why this is shocking? They use phonics and it's optional if you learn the words with your child; they want the children to have a good grasp of the 'new words' for each level before they move them up. Certainly when I learnt them with DS I'd sound out and encourage him to.

Children should be given books that are consistent with their current level of phonic knowledge (not ancient books containing words they can't decode and need to learn) as stated in the curriculum

Because that method is bad practice and can lead to reading difficulties in some children. This method was supposed to have been thrown out of schools 10 years ago

If the school used decodeable readers, then children wouldn't need to learn any words before moving up because they would have the skills they need to read the whole book.

If you are in England, then schools have been given money by the government to replace those reading schemes with decodeable ones.

Well, they do use decodable readers in the main - they read ORT.

Like I say, the school just issue a list of the words children will encounter at their new level, so the parents can look at them out of school if they want. Most of them can be worked out with only a few very simple phonetically weird words like 'the', 'a' and 'of' in the mix. I don't feel the school are doing anything wrong; they were judged outstanding in 2013 - would they be if they were getting the reading so wrong? Although I have a feeling saying that will provoke a barrage of reasons why that could happen!

If they are using decodable books then sending home lists if words is odd