Which set of books can you recommend for first time readers?

[99redballoons]

DS is 4.5 and started Reception in Sept. At the moment the school aren't sending home books in Reception. I would like to start at home, but all our books are normal bedtime stories, not simple phonics type books. DS can already blend the letters in the first 3 lines of jolly phonics, and he won't be learning 'ai' 'oa' etc till way after Xmas. He seems quite bored atm going over sounds he already knows and I'm keen to get him reading (atleast trying) simple stories.

Can anyone suggest a good set?

I have seen these

and also these which were mentioned in another thread, but I'm not sure which ones or how many etc. or even if they're the ones to get.

Ds1 has been enjoying the ORT Songbirds Phonics range. I bought a pack of 18 (6 each of level 1,2 & 3) brand new via e-bay.

Lots of c-v-c words to practice and the stories are by Julia Donaldson (author of The Gruffalo)

Have you tried looking in your library? Ours has some simple phonics-based reading books, which we used at a similar stage in Reception. Much cheaper than buying a set which he may grow out of very quickly, if reading suddenly "clicks" for him. There are some Usborne ones which DD1 quite liked, although TBH we mainly just picked out words which she could read in her normal story books and that seemed enough to keep her interested and challenged.

I would also make sure you don't use the ones that he will get from school in a few weeks' time (probably). They are boring enough without doing them twice!

Thanks very much.

Completely forgot about the library. Will try and go during half term next week.

Will look up the Songbirds ones too and ebay.

I also have a younger dd, so hoping they'll get twice the use!

Have a look here -all the decodables listed -I'd recommend the Readwriteinc ones:

www.aowm73.dsl.pipex.com/dyslexics/resources_and_further_11.htm

The farmyard tales are good but would be beyond the ability of an early reader, particuallry one who has not done long vowel sounds. Jelly and Bean are fantastic and start very simply so suit the earliest reader.

I would start with the reception A series and see how he gets on - once you have some knowledge of his ability based on these books you can speak to Marlene Grewnwood (who writes Jelly and Bean) and she will advise you which ones to get next - she gave me fantastic advice and I got exactly the right level for my dc's.

I would also suggest, if he is bored, teaching him the long vowel sounds yourself then you can also move onto the Jolly phonics readers (red level) which are trickier than Jelly & Bean and assume a knowledge of the full 44 sounds. The Jolly phonics DVD is excellent for this.

99 - on another thread someone also recommended Ruth Miskin

www.ruthmiskinliteracy.com/

you can order them through the Book People.

Our local library has the Songbird books so it is worth a look to see if you like them before you buy!

Thanks very much for the further advice. I will check out the links.

I spoke to my mil about it and she said she had bought a set of books from a charity shop ages ago which had one line for the child to read and a few sentences per page for the parent to read. I tried him on one last night and he was brilliant!! I was soooo impressed. eg. he read "Tim sat on the chair" !!! He needed help with chair (doesn't know 'ch' or 'ai' yet), but read the other four words really well, slowly but confidently. He didn't get 'the' either to start with but remembered it on further pages. I was so proud of him. She is going to give me the rest of the series (not sure what it is exactly but it's about the people who live in Puddle Lane).

I think I will first check out the library and the JB books.

Thanks so much.

I can't reccommend Jelly and Bean enough. They have transormed my ds who was struggling on ORT at school into a confident reader. He's flying through the first series.

I would seriously recommend the library, as we got very little use out of the early reading books. Because the stories are so simple, once DS1 had seen a book once, he knew it off by heart, so wasn't really reading at all, so we needed a constant supply of new books.

I like Red Nose Readers, which I got through Book People.

Old fashioned but dd taught herself to read with Dr Seuss.

Now you mention it there is a lot of repetition in Dr Seuss and learning a few words can go a long way in a child being able to read most of the book.

We've just done "Mr Brown can moo ...." and ds1 loved it.

I've had the pleasure of teaching many reception children to read using the ORT Oxford Reading Tree scheme. The children love it and so do the adults. They are expensive though, so if you can pick some up second hand that's great.

Happy Reading!

Aren't the old ORT books very much about the child looking at the picture and using this to decode the narrative though ?

I read somewhere that this conflicts with the roll out of a return to synthetic phonics after the dramatic pilot scheme results that showed it to be the best scheme to reach all levels of ability and start all kids on the road to reading.

There are newer ORT books. The "Songbirds Phonics" range is still ORT but it reinforces the classroom teaching of phonics. We've bought a set for ds1. He loves them and we are now just waiting for the class to cover more letter combination sounds before we move on to the harder ones. His school are using synthetic phonics teaching methods but keep sending home old ORT first level books with no words in. Ds1 tolerated the first couple where we talked about the pictures and what was happening but he flatly refuses to "read" them now and wants c-v-c simple word type narrative to read for himself. I am confused as to why his school are mixing the old system with the new but I do understand that some kids will need to just get used to handling books and spending time "looking" at the story. It may be that they simply don't have the funds to replace the old ORT books with something more compatable (sp) with the phonics strategy.

fedupwasherwoman I posted a thread on this a week or so ago, sounds like we are in the same position. I am very happy that my DDs school are doing a sound a day and infact have nearly finished. However they kept telling me that she wasn't ready for word books (we had those awful books without words) and then when they did send one home the first word was 'Who' (as in Who is it?) and the book contained 'spaceman' and 'it's'. I wasn't happy at all and mentioned it to the teacher, didn't get much joy there so am going to the head, hopefully today. It just isn't good enough tbh. The fact is that the children are at different stages, the school should be developing them according to their level not grouping them all together and following a set pattern. Sorry rant over but it really gets me!

Just to let you know my dd loves the songbirds phonics also as mentioned on here already. She is in year one. However if you are going to give those particular ones a go then check out www.schoollink.co.uk Brilliant buys. Song bird phonics books are there at £9.99 for 10. Ment to be nearly £40 worth!!!