I get asked this question a lot “What books can I buy that my child can read himself/herself?!”. Buying books for beginner readers isn’t as simple as it seems. Most of your child’s favourite books such as “Owl Babies” or “The Pig in the Pond” are far, far too difficult for a Junior Infant child to read. In fact, by the time your child can read all the words necessary for these books he/she will probably consider it too “babyish” and dismiss them off hand.

I really like the “Bob Books” series. Set 1 Beginner Readers is perfect for Junior Infants or those in their first year of school.

Your child only need to be able to sound out the letters M, A, T and S to independently read his/her first book! New letters are added gradually, until by book 12, children have read books with all letters of the alphabet (except Q).

The series consists 12 books. 12 pages each. 3-letter words.

Here is a close-up of a page from the series. The story and the illustration is very simple and clear. Cute or what?!

While these books give good practice decoding or “sounding out words” this is not enough to achieve reading fluency. Your child should also be able to read some “Tricky Words” which are non-phonetic and are important connector words in stories such as ” the, has, he, she…”

May I introduce Bob Books: Sight Words Kindergarten 🙂

This series introduces the following words that are commonly found in stories for children this age, some are phonetic and are included due to their importance:

after       as      can      did        down      fly      get       go
goes       had   has       home   in             is        jump  look
not         off      on       over      ran         saw     see      she
some     they  to        was       went       who

The box contains:

10 easy-to-read,s small books, 12 pages each.

Stories are told in three and four letter words, plus  3 new sight words in each book.

Context clues and illustrations give sight word hints.

 30 two-sided, sight words flash cards.

You can see that they are nice and easy to read. The tricky word “saw” is the focus. I can state from experience that no child can have too much practice and exposure to these tricky words. Children who have a good and automatic knowledge of these are more fluent readers and have a greater understanding of the story they are reading than children who don’t.

For a long time these books were not readily available outside of the U.S. A big thanks to Book Depository for saving the day yet again. They deliver worldwide, yippee! I just love those guys! They are good value and reliable, I use them all the time.

You would imagine that these would cost a small fortune. Thankfully they are really, really affordable. I am currently saving to purchase the entire series!!!

Bob Books Set 1 Beginner Readers is only 10.68 Euro.

Click here for a link to the site

Bob Books Sight Words Kindergarten is only 10.64 Euro.

Click here for a link to the site

Books Depository currently have a 10% off offer making them even more affordable.

I hope that you find this post useful. I will be blogging about books for beginner over the coming weeks. If you have any questions please email me at info@missmernagh.com or leave a comment on the end of this post.

Let me know if any of you purchase them. I would love to hear what you think.

Miss Mernagh 🙂