The Bob books are so sweet, but in my home they play a very small role in our reading lesson routine. For us, the interest in this series was very a short period of time. Here’s what we did:
I taught my children the basics of each letter sound (short letter sounds only). I explained the fact that reading is simply blending the letter sounds together to form a word. At that point, I just left the Bob books available for their own practise as they desired. (our formal lessons involved other materials I had on hand and wanted to use for our “real” school time)
My two eldest boys didn’t go for Bob books at ALL (albeit they were both closer to age 6 when they started reading). My third son, who began reading at age 5, had marginal interest; he spent some time with the Bob books, but lost interest rather quickly.
My daughter, the youngest starting reader (at age 4), enjoyed the Bob books quite a bit. She marvelled in the quick success and the fact that she could actually READ them! That said, I will tell you even my daughter was done with them after about 3 weeks. She had picked them up every day during this early three week period, looked at them often, and practised as she desired. But after 3 weeks she had it all figured out, and it was NO LONGER FUN (which she said with a pout!) Suddenly, the Bob books were “baby books” and she insisted she didn’t want to practise with them anymore. I moved right away to teaching her some sight/memory words so that we could get into early readers from the library (Dick and Jane books were our second step once the challenge of Bob books was done). She now loves reading (age 4.5)
