Pack of phonics books - any cheap ways to get them?

[drspouse]

We are struggling a bit with the school reading books sent home - school insist they are the right level but they just have way too many non-decodable-for-him words.

We have kind of been going with "sound out the ones you can and we'll read the rest" but the books also don't seem to be practicing the sounds he IS supposed to be learning (Yellow).

We have finally got him keen to read daily so I really want him to be learning from this - not waiting for them to do the sounds in class so was thinking of getting him a pack of Floppy Phonics or whatever is about the same but they are Sooo expensive in a pack.

(Added to which they seem to come in sets of 1+, 2 and 3 and we no longer need 1+ or 2!)

If you register with Oxford Owl (free) they have a number of their floppy books and others which are all available to read online (tablet or pc). A great free resource and has other activities and reading support.

The Book People often have deals.

(Also, in theory they do ORT phonics. Which sets should I avoid as too different/too non-decodable??)

staveley I think we've done all the ones on the ORT site that are "basic" i.e. not the "extra reading" ones - there were 2 or 3 beginning Yellow ones.
There were also the slightly harder ones like Traditional Tales - I might see if he's ready for those, or repeat the easier ones, but I think he's not quite ready for those and might need a bit more practice.

Vodka annoyingly they are one of the places that only seems to do 1+ 2 and 3 together. Or 1 and 2. I'm trawling through to see if I can find 3 alone or 3+4 or anything helpful but it's a bit of a waste to pay for all the 1 and 2!

The Works often have stuff like this in stock.

Oh good tip squishy as then I can check they aren't too advanced/easy.

I’d go to book People and get songbirds set. I did get some later biff and chip books from amazon as I wanted to discover ‘the key’ in the right order but also used oxford owl.

You can get Songbirds by the level on Amazon I think. Though the book people 1-6 set is well worth it, a bit of practice of easy stuff could help his confidence.

Any phonics based scheme should be fine, you might need to level up or down slightly depending on the order the sounds are taught. They're all pretty similar though.

I also recommend the Songbirds set. I got it from Book People.
Once DS2 could read well all the levels of Songbirds he was ready to read other books, so it didn't matter if they were not from a scheme or non-decodable.

Thanks all - I've found level 3 books in a pack on ebay for a reasonable price so we'll start with those. He may be able to cope better with the school "level 3" books after he's got a better grounding so we'll revisit after that.

The Amazon ones are still £25 plus for 6 books that he will take a couple of days to read!

We'll try and spot a good price for levels 4-6 when we are done with this.

Also the local library do a small selection of phonics books. Might be worth checking that out too.

I did have a look at ours stavely but nothing helpful at all. Mostly books that will be fine when he is a free reader.

Library - normally you can request books from other county libraries.

Best place I found was jumble sales and book fayres. You can often get a dozen books for just a couple of pounds.

I've got loads of these books! Let me have a look and I'll put a photo up!

Ok there are too many for a photo!
I have:
7 at level 3,
5 at level 4,
10 at level 5,
5 at level 6,
8 at level 7,
3 at level 8,
9 at level 9
And 2 at level 10!
All in varying states, some brand new, some really old.
I'm happy for you to just pay postage and donate some cash to the nspcc or something, they are cluttering up my study! Or pass on to another mnetter!

Actually I might get you to post them back and then I'll give them to my school, forgot about that! They can go into my infant library! Would you be ok with that?

Here they are!

That would be fabulous Checkpoint!

Thank you so much. I'll PM you.

www.speld-sa.org.au/services/phonic-books.html

Huge selection of free online ones, here.

www.readingchest.co.uk/

Reading chest may also be worth a look. I used it for a couple of months with my DD.

The library have lots, and they're free :)

I bought the us borne learning to read set of 30 odd books off book people. The stories are much more fun than chip and biff and the books cover stage 1 up to about 10?