Name: Thrive! NCHE Homeschool Conference
Start: 2025-05-22T00:00:00-05:00
End: 2025-05-24T23:59:59-05:00
Location: Winston-Salem, NC

This topic has 10 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 2 days, 20 hours ago by Psalm31.

Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

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March 28, 2025 at 9:41 am
Fertang
Participant
My DS6 is doing well with reading lessons. We are currently using AAR 2 but he isn’t interested in the readers at all. He loves for me to read to him and has a great attention span. He likes adventure stories, dogs, science, missionary stories, etc. He will basically listen to anything well written. Are there decodable books with topics like these that I can use to get him interested in reading or do we trudge through the typical early readers until he reaches fluency and can read the interesting books on his own?
March 29, 2025 at 11:08 am
totheskydear
Participant
I know nothing about the AAR readers so if this isn’t helpful… oops. 😉 When my little ones have reached the silent e and th, sh, ch words, in addition to the reading lesson we’ll read maybe a paragraph from early books like Little Bear, Frog and Toad, and the Billy and Blaze series. I have my child read words they either know already or can figure out, and I read the more difficult ones.
Another good book is A Primary Reader by E. Louise Smythe. It’s on archive.org and is a collection of classic stories simplified for new readers. 🙂 This is a collection of similar books, retelling of Chaucer, Dante, the Odyssey, and others: https://issuu.com/librariesofhope3/stacks/2a2e98b4408440e29f1b103819971fbc You’ll likely need to do shared reading where you read some of the words for him.
Reading should be fun so he’ll love it for life. Don’t trudge!
March 29, 2025 at 5:08 pm
Ruralmama
Participant
<p style=”text-align: left;”>We use AAR also. Those books totheskydear suggested sound good. My kids have all mostly enjoyed and greatly benefited from reading through the Alice and Jerry readers. They are a reader set just like the pathway readers suggested on the SCM website, but my kids like them better. They have increasingly interesting stories and lovely watercolor pictures. Every book is not about Alice and Jerry. They branch out. You can find old ones on eBay or many have been reprinted and rainbow resource carries them.</p>
We use them for extra reading practice. Somehow kids seem to need intensive phonics and sight words…..it hasn’t confused them yet and they are not prone to guess.
March 29, 2025 at 5:10 pm
Ruralmama
Participant
To add: the AAR Readers are the most interesting phonetic ones I’ve seen…..and I’ve looked at lots;)!
March 29, 2025 at 5:58 pm
Fertang
Participant
Thank you! We have the Little Bear and Frog and Toad books, and he has all those skills. I’ll plan to take a break from AAR and read through the Little Bear books. I think it will be a nice change of pace!
March 29, 2025 at 6:00 pm
Fertang
Participant
I will check those out. Thank you!
March 29, 2025 at 6:03 pm
Fertang
Participant
I also think they’re interesting and sometimes funny. I think he just needs a break from AAR. I’m going to go through the Little Bear books with him and then we’ll go back to AAR lessons.
March 31, 2025 at 1:51 pm
kymom
Participant
We’ve enjoyed “Mouse Soup” and “Mouse Tales” both by Arnold Lobel (author of Frog and Toad). Both books are easily divided into multiple short readings.
April 1, 2025 at 3:27 pm
Mrs_Longworth
Participant
My second son loves the Pathway Readers. That being said, my older son hated them, and preferred Dr. Suess. Arnold Lobel is a favorite in our home. Syd Hoff’s books, and the Amelia Bedelia series are well-loved here too.
April 4, 2025 at 9:33 pm
Fertang
Participant
Thank you all! I will check those out!
May 2, 2025 at 7:12 pm
Psalm31
Participant
Harriet Treadwell books are excellent!