as my 4 and a half year old daughter kept begging me to teach her how to read, I started with Learn to read in 100 easy lessons and she enjoys that. I have no clue as to what readers to use after that. Can anybody help me?
My boys are using All About Reading for lessons and the Pathway Readers for fun reading practice. They LOVE them. The stories are engaging and slowly increase in difficulty and length. They come in hardback format, a great size and feed for holding, the images are in pencil drawing and the stories are about family life and animals and appeal equally to boys and girls. I highly recommend them. We do not have the workbooks that go with them; we just use them as readers.
You could use the Treadwell readers, or the McGuffey readers….
or, for my daughter, I’ve just had her read some good books to me… ones from the top of my head that she read was “Elves and the Shoemaker”, and “Make Way for Ducklings”
I used the Little Bear books, Dick and Jane readers, and Pathway readers when we finished 100 Easy Lessons. In less than six months, my ds (then 6) was reading chapter books on a 3rd grade level. I think 100 Easy Lessons works!
We used The Robinson Crusoe Reader (yes it will “ruin” the original for your child but this was THE reader that got my son to fall in love with reading so I have NO regrets! Some of the words will give you challenges/opportunity to either memorize as sight or use decoding skills. So be aware there are some are higher level words…but most of the reader is about grade 2 level); also, Little Bear books, Billy and Blaze series (very nice illustrations in both Little Bear and B&B) and for my newest reader I am currently using a reader series that I found at a homeschool show last year. I like to have a LOT of options at this age/stage. The series title is American Language Series (www.lighthousepublishers.com) and I have the following levels: K One, K Two, and K Three. They are mostly phonics based but not ruined because of it, LOL! They are nicely done, wholesome, great illustrations, nice little stories (a better fit and more “filling” for us than Dick and Jane or early Dr. Seuss books… we just never seemed to love those).
I like to alternate McGuffey readers with more colorful early readers like Frog and Toad. We have this set of books from when we used HOD and I love the variety. http://heartofdakota.com/emerging-reader.php
I have had my eyes on that HOD set for a long time now! I just put some of them on hold at the library for DS6 (well almost 6). What a great set of readers.
We used readers on the Sonlight list, which includes Little Bear, Arnold Lobel, Dr. Seuss, THe Beginners Bible, and Step into Reading: http://www.sonlight.com/readers-2.html
We’ve used McGuffey’s and books listed in the back of the 100 lessons book. We also have a tremendous number of “I Can Read” type books….Little Bear, Frog and Toad, Danny and the Dinosaur, the Frances books, etc. Practice, practice, practice.