So dd3 has decided to teach herself to read. She has rejected any lessons and just wants to use starfall. Any tips fo self taught methods to help here as she will sit at the gosh darn computer all day if i let her. She refuses most stories - we have only just started picture books. We only read non fiction and labelling books ( ie the ones with photos and names of items). We have the leap frog letters and a set of flash cards as well but she is not interested in those. She does ask for activities to practise her writing though.

It was really hard for me at times to sit back and let DD figure it out on her own but her father wanted us to respect her autonomy and give her the confidence that comes from having learned to read independently at a young age.

I don't say this very often but he was right and it worked out well for her. When children are engaged, they are learning so for now, maybe Starfall is what she needs and as long as she adheres to a reasonable daily limit, all is good?

Yep I think you are spot on. I guess I was worried I wasn't providing the "right" learning environment. Is it even self taught f a program is used? I always thought self taught was kids just picking it up frill signs and daily life....

My DD4 taught herself to read using starfall at 2/3 as well. She was like your daughter, she would want to sit at the computer for hours and it was a battle to get her away from it. She also didn't want my help, as with most things. So I had no hand in her learning any of the sounds. She was not a fan of flash cards either.

She was very big on environmental print (labels/signage/letterhead) and would point out every sign word she knew. If your DD likes games you can make it into a game. Ask her which sound she's learned and then tell her to let you know anytime she comes across a word that begins with T or that sound during the day. That way she's in control of it. My DD likes tests and quizzes so when we went to the grocery store we'd ask her to find 5 R's. She'd find them and ask for another task. We also had a set of sight readers. At first she "read" them to us by interpreting the pictures. Shortly after she had them all memorized by herself and then she began reading them on her own.

So, Starfall really works and if she's interested in it I'd let her do it with a reasonable limit as PP mentioned. Other then asking her what she learned and asking her to demonstrate that we didn't have to do any formal teaching of how to read.

My boys both made their own books...lots of paper, markers, crayons, stickers, stamps, staplers, construction paper...and they used writing as a way to learn how to read.

One of my boys would pick a category and make a book on that category...Toys or Animals or Vehicles for example might have been the topic...then he would draw (or sometimes ask me to draw a specific item for him to color in), color, then yell from the other room where he was working "how do you spell _______?" for the hard ones like coyote or jaguar but he would work out easy ones for him self. Then he would read his book to me and then show it off to his dad and read it to him.

Later on I would make story books using a story of something that happened to him and he would illustrate it (or we might illustrate it together). He loved those because they were actual stories with him as the main character and we made them really silly and exaggerated. I remember one about a camping trip and how he, his brother, and dad came home dirty and one about how his dad went to work with his one pair of shoes in the car and he had to wear an old pair of his brother's shoes to preschool that looked like clown shoes until I could get his shoes out of my husband's car at work and bring them to him. He loved that one.

Around their fourth birthday, I checked to see if my kids understood the concept of blending letter sounds to make words and they did. The public library had an audio version of the BOB books. DD loved that and listened to the first set over and over again in her room. We did maybe one other set of BOB books and then she was able to read easy reader books pretty easily. By the time she started K she was reading second-third grade level stuff and now in third she is a very fast, fluent reader.
DS never seemed as interested and I just kind of left him alone. I did do one or two sets of BOB books with him and occasionally tried to get him to read a Level 2 easy reader book. Despite hardly ever reading and having almost no interest, he somehow learned extremely fast and was reading second-third grade level stuff pretty fluently by the time K started. He is a master of phonics--can decode just about anything, even words that he's never seen or heard before. And he's very good at spelling. DD didn't pick up on the phonics/spelling quite as easily and seemed to do more memorization of words than DS did.
Each kid is so different and it's good to let them take the lead. I liked the BOB books, at least introducing the first set of them but there are plenty of similar easy phonics books you can get. I tried Starfall once of twice but the kids weren't really into it.

One of my twins was determined to teach himself to read at age 5, before kindergarten. He didn't want any help at all, and would stop reading if we tried to help him. He taught himself to read using the Bob books. He did have a good grasp of phonics, though, so he was able to sound out the words. Starfall is a good site, and so is readingeggs.com.


The other twin learned to read at 3. He would ask for help when he couldn't read a word, but he also benefited from the bob books.

I am following this thread with keen interest. DD4 has known all her letter sounds for a year now. Not sure how she learnt them as we do not allow screen time expect 1/2 hour a week on PBS and we have not done flash cards or anything like that. She might have picked them up at her Montessori preschool she attended from age 3-4, even though her teacher there was equally surprised that DD knew all the sounds. She can read phonetic words. She has been spelling phonetically and writing for about an year now as well. However, she has shown no interest in taking it any further and reading books. She claims that the easy readers like BOB and Biscuit books are too boring and the interesting books are too hard. So, for now,I just read to her. (I am reading Adventures of Alice in Wonderland to her now and she loves the book). I am hoping she just picks up a good book one day and starts to read. Not sure how much longer that is going to take. In fact, she fails to recognize even simple words that she has read a million times and reads it phonetically every.single.time. Something just hasn't clicked yet but hopefully, when it clicks, it will progress quickly. In the homeschool, I have moveable alphabets, what's a Gnu, and word tiles for sentence building for her use. She loves the game where I put about 6-8 different objects in a bowl, spell the object names on a rug using moveable alphabets and she then matches the words and the objects. Since she can usually match without having to read the whole word, she feels good about it. She still gets to see how longer words like triangle or binoculars look.

DS2 was obsessed with Starfall when he was learning his letter sounds, and now he likes the little phonetic readers and build-a-word programs in the extended subscription.

A series of leveled phonetic readers that we enjoy is called, "Now I'm Reading". They have full colour pictures that lend themselves to extending the basic storyline. We decode the text with DS and then elaborate on the stories to make them more interesting.

http://www.innovativekids.com/shop/230/learn-to-read-books

Another activity that DS likes is drawing a picture or modelling a statue out of play dough and labeling the item, either with paper labels that I write or magnetic letters.

We also walk around the neighbourhood identifying items the first and last sounds in the words. It's a fun game with the bonus that it builds phonemic awareness and finding skills. We do a version of I-Spy on our neighbourhood walks where we give two clues, one of which is the first letter of the word.

I draw sheets of simple pictures and have him write out all or part of the corresponding word with magnetic letters. This is a prime way I've introduced word families and rhyming.

Another fun game is to place magnetic letters in a jar and draw them at random. Then, think of a word that starts or ends in that letter. We often make up songs that incorporate the words.

An alternative is to pick a theme, like trucks or dinosaurs, and run through the alphabet from start to finish thinking of an item in the class that corresponds to each letter. I'll write out the words or help DS type them on the computer. You might be surprised how well your LO can spell simply by sounding out the word slowly. I sure was! If you blank for a letter, make a new item up, act it out or paint it, etc.

I'd also try to keep up the pleasure reading as much as possible. IMO, everything should be secondary to developing a love of reading. You might like some books by Aliki or other authors in the Let's-Read-and-Find-Out series, which layer plots over non-fiction topics. Those books might serve as a gateway to greater enjoyment of fiction.

Also, just a though, but how advanced is the fiction you're covering? I find DS loses interest in fiction first when his comprehension jumps. You might want to try some longer stories, like Paddington Bear or James Herriot's animal tales, to see if a little more richness in plot does the trick.

My advice, at 3, is to follow her lead wherever it takes her (while limiting computer time as you feel appropriate lol!). You mentioned that she "refuses most stories" - do you mean she's refusing to try reading stories herself, or she's impatient and doesn't want to listen to you? I was told by countless teachers etc (whom I respect) that the most important thing to do when children are young is to read to them (just as important as having them practicing reading on their own). If she's refusing to try to read on her own, don't worry with it or bother with it right now. If she's bored with stories you're reading to her, try reading more "bigger" books - books with more complicated story lines etc. Maybe read her something that you loved as a child when you were reading yourself - this is just an example picked out of thin air, but for example, if you loved Little House on the Prairie books, try reading the first one to her. My girls also loved the series of books about young girls that's published by American Girl, and my kids loved listening to the "Golden Classics" when they were around 3.

You also mentioned your dd likes writing activities - go with that! Our kids' preschool firmly believed that writing is a precursor to reading developmentally. I don't know if there's any truth to it, but most of the kids that I knew at the preschool followed that path (self-led) and most went on to early or more advanced reading before they were in kindergarten.

Most importantly, just let her have fun and enjoy her - the preschool years go by soooooo so very quickly!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Of course, we don't always get to participate in conventional wisdom as it pertains to our little non-conformers. DS7 couldn't be read to until around 4, but he was reading all sorts of stuff himself well before 3. Always had his own priorities, and they seem to work.

If your child isn't really into picture books right now I'd just focus on what she likes. Not everyone likes fiction, some people always prefer nonfiction. If she mainly likes the nonfiction books with photos of things then I'd get a big supply of those and just aim to make reading together part of your day and try to bring in a variety of these books that she likes so it stays interesting to you both and so you have new things to talk about. I try to make the focus of reading together on learning about the world rather than learning to read.

With Starfall, it might be good to pay attention to what the games are teaching your daughter and try to point out related material in the environment at stores and at home. We've only had a Starfall reading app for about a week and maybe it differs from the computer version but for example if your child likes a song that says "double e says ee" then you could point out words in stores with double Es and sing the song to help reinforce things that Starfall is teaching.

The main thing I focus on is not letting my child be obsessed with anything at the expense of other areas of development. When you are an adult and have an all consuming interest that can be a good thing but not at age 3. My child is at the level of recognizing a lot of words and trying to sound out new words but not yet really reading and I'm not sure Starfall will help bring her to the next level but she does really enjoy it. I think my child would easily play games like Starfall all day and would learn a lot this way but that at this age it's especially important to make sure that most of the day is about developing a range of motor skills, social skills and cognitive function (especially executive function, attention, working memory) and that games like Starfall are providing limited benefits. Not that you said or implied you were letting your child play Starfall all day, this is just a big issue within our house right now with at least a few tantrums over active screen time limits pretty much every day so this is where I am on the issue right now, having given it a lot of thought lately. I second guess myself all the time and wonder what would happen if we didn't have screen time limits. I wish there was more research on this topic (negative effects of active screen time) so I wouldn't feel like I was guessing all the time.

Great words of wisdom from MotherofToddler.

On the topic of linking screen interests to the real world, I tend to sandwich screen time between analog activities reacting to the same topic. So, with our current "Dinosaur Train" obsession, we read dinosaur books before and after watching the show, or act out the show with figurines, to pre- and post-saturate DS in dinosaur activities.

I'm probably tilted more toward the laissez-faire end of the screen time spectrum. I let a previous "Winnie the Pooh" obsession play out naturally a few months ago and, even at its peak, we'd watch maybe 90 minutes of Pooh per day. (I didn't allow any other screen time.) The peak lasted a few days and fizzled to zero within a week when DS was left to indulge ad libitum. Most days, we have about a hour of screen time from all sources.

Now, if he wanted to read Pooh, draw the characters, build their homes, or act out the books, I'd let that go on all day. YMMV.

Back to the topic of reading: I've found a fun way to incorporate some physical play into learning to read (or anything) is jumping games. Draw words or letters on the driveway in chalk and run or jump from letter to letter to form words. You can race, compete for letter spaces, etc. It's how I taught DS to jump, incidentally.

We never read to our kids and we let them have as much TV and computer time as they wanted (probably several dozen hours of screen time per week). They taught themselves to read at age 2 or 3, so that's one way to do it.

Don't forget to always have the closed captioning (subtitles) on the TV.

Interesting question. I never really thought about this in depth but if I used a site similar to Starfall in concept to learn a new language (not that I'd ever manage to do that), I'd still consider that as independent learning. It's really not that different from a child picking up a calculus book and teaching himself/herself except that it has a lot of visual-auditory materials. I tend to think that self-teaching does not require that you discover everything from scratch but you learn without the guidance from or support of a teacher.

It's hard to trust young children to know how to learn; after all, that level of metacognition isn't supposed to kick in until much later but if they can drive their own learning process, that is a wonderful thing. I try to support my DD by keeping our apartment organized so that she knows where all the library books are as well as hunting down cheap used copies of old and new classics for our home library. Whenever I try to help beyond that, DD rejects whatever I suggest so I've learned my lesson to keep out of her way.

So I asked dd yesterday night how she learnt her letter sounds. She immediately replied,"
I learnt them by myself mom. Remember the song you used to sing that was like abc song but was actually abacada." I do vaguely remember singing that to her when she was 18-24 months, a phase we both spent singing a ton of nursery rhymes. Didn't realize it had helped dd so much.

Interesting thread! My youngest taught herself the alphabet & sounds with the starfall app before 18 monhts (primarily car rides). At 2 she would point out letters while we were out, sometimes sounding out a little, we thought she'd keep going but her interests went elsewhere and we saw no reason to redirect our own personal cyclone back to learning to read at the ripe old age of 2. Two years later at 3.5yrs she's just now having an explosion of pre-reading skills, "[word] starts with..., like [otherword] starts with..." "[word] sounds like [otherword]" but she's more interested in getting us to tell her how to spell words than she is in trying to read books. I assume she'll read well before school though...

Ours is like that too, we find her passed out at night with a flashlight & a book when we go to bed! At 3.5 she recognizes a bunch of sight words and sounds out others, but she mostly likes to spell things back "Mommy, what does M-E-G-A-T-R-O-N spell?"
She's currently in a comic book phase and seems to really have an easier time reading them (she reads My Little Pony & The Amazing Spidergirl) than she does regular books.
Our biggest struggle has always been memorization, she started memorizing books likely before she could speak, because as soon as she could, she'd recite things we hadn't read in months! Because of this she won't even look at the words in her books, she'll just recite them - so we got her comics, which aren't as linear and make it so he has to actually LOOK at words to identify them.
She is currently in preK and at nap time each day she opts to read instead of sleeping (she's a terrible sleeper!) she writes "letters" to her friends by telling me what she wants to say, having me write it on a white board and then either typing it (a skill she's mastered) or handwriting it (a skill she's far from mastered). We aren't rushing her, and we take it to her level of interest, we almost read every night unless she's misbehaved and lost stories. I've found that the more casual I am about it, the better she does, she doesn't like pressure and she sometimes decides that she wants to "fit in" (my word, not hers) and purposely holds back because her friends can't do things, so we do our best not to make a big deal of specific things that set her apart because she's very sensitive to it!

Wow everyone - thanks so much for the great advice!
Just to clarify she gets an hour or 2 of starfall a day which is too much I feel but not enough as far as she is concerned.
I agree 100% about not letting computer interfere with other development - actually she is very sporty (1 st sign of giftedness was throwing and catching at 14 months!). Plus she goes to a play only kindy 2x weekly for the social side of things.

With the books we may be making progress. (In the past 24 hours for heaven sake.) She has sat through some margaret mahy. I even got her to listen to a few fairy tales which I think is purely because she can point at the words as we go along - yay. I just always dreamt of reading fairy tales to my kids - sigh. Perhaps the fiction switch just got flicked? She has just hit a stage where everything is exploding and I'm finding it hard to balance letting her find out for herself and extending her.... We had to build a dodecahedron today and play catch with it.

Given her interest in learning to read, the best thing for DS were sight words (there are some apps of she wants to do it herself). High frequency sight words quickly my son's reading ability. Literally, he went from kind of reading to actual reading within a month.

Canmom's post reminds me. Does anyone know if there are any theories on why some kids start reading via learning sight words (ie they might start noticing THE, AND, FROM, FOR, IS, etc before anything else) while other kids pick up decoding meaningful words first. Both my older kids, even the dyslexic, struggled more with THE than any other word but least with complex but contextually meaningful words.

My kids never learned sight words (obviously they learned them but I never taught them). So many schools push flash cards so hard and I've never really understood that. Kids can easily learn sight words just by seeing them over and over again in text.

With DS, I printed out a list of Dolch sight words one day to see if he knew any of them, and I was shocked he could read almost all of them. He was probably 4. This was after he learned how to blend words but before he really started reading frequently (we were at the stage where I occasionally tried to get him to read a BOB book or something similar to me).

Yeah no :-). My kids really struggled with sight words like the, and, or, it, from, etc. flash cards measurably improved their fluency (afrer they wwre already making progress as readers) because when reading books they'd just ignore those words quite often and notice only the meaningful words...

Our son (now 6.7) learned to read (we think) around three. I say, (we think) because I sort of stumbled upon his ability one night when, on a lark, I decided to ask him to read out of a Dr. Seuss book. I'll never forget that night. It was when I realized we had a child out of the norm.

Prior to this, we did what was recommended...reading to him while running our finger under the lines. He watched Sesame Street. We bought him Baby Einstein videos.

We also bought him electronic games that were marked higher than his age. Not because we though he was gifted, but because when we went to the toy store, that is what he wanted. I actually felt guilty for buying my child a toy that was two years beyond his age!

One such item I vividly recall was Vtech Alphabet Town. He had that in his crib when he was around 2 and absolutely ADORED it.

Today he's reading above a fifth grade level.

We used Preschool Prep for DS' sight word learning. He was around four when I bought the series. It was so cute.

YouTube of "Meet The Sight Words"

Mahagogo5, it seems like our DDs are only a month apart and they sound very similar. My DD went through a phase where she wouldn't ready anything if she didn't find it herself. She is also very suspicious of fairy tales. She seems to know that those types of stories normally come with a scary villain or two and she wants nothing to do with them. I remember showing this book to DD when she was 2 and she ran away as soon as she saw the cover:

http://www.amazon.com/Lon-Po-Red-Ri...&qid=1382662946&sr=8-1&keywords=lo+po+po

(my bad for not noticing how scary that looks to two year olds)

She's slowly overcoming her fear but it's probably take her awhile to completely be okay with fairy tales.

Her reading curriculum designed by her went something like this:

Phase 1 Piggie and Gerald books by Mo Willems
Phase 2 P.D. Eastman books (but not Dr. Seuss)
Phase 3 Henry and Mudge and other Cynthia Rylant books
Phase 4 longer picture and chapter books

She still reads Piggie and Gerald books once in awhile and still giggles at exact the same jokes. One of these days, I should write to Mo Willems that his books inspired DD to learn to read.

Mana, that progression is frighteningly similar to the order of books we've read to DS. Amazing.

That is an interesting coincidence. Maybe it could be a beginning of early childhood education for children who love books.

Incidentally, the book that first got DD to read sentences/books was Have You Seen My Cat by Eric Carle, which is one of my least favorite books of his but I found a big book copy of it at a library sale and the repetitive nature as well as the size of the book (bigger print and more spacing) might have helped.

On a slightly related note, some Piggie and Gerald books are available in French too. The Pigeon is still there at the end of each book, much to DD's delight.

I totally sympathize with the very bland first readers. DD(3 - almost 4) struggled with this tremendously this past winter/spring. We have finally finally gotten to where she can read the Pinkalicious (and some Fancy Nancy) level 1 books. It has truly made a world of a difference having stories that she is interested in. She even wants to read them over & over which is not typically her personality.

Some of the early first readers that DD liked were from a little boutique bookstore. They were much more enjoyable than the super dry ones. Here is one book from the series:
http://www.amazon.com/Matt-Sid-We-Read-Phonics/dp/1601153163

Mana: Are you talking about the "bright & early/beginner" books that are by PD Eastman but have the little Dr. Seuss logo? My DD loves those too.
Have you read "Squirrels on Skis?" it's actually by J Hamilton Ray but part of the Dr. Seuss early readers… my DD thinks it is SOOO funny.

Our library doesn't have that title yet but it looks like a good stocking stuffer. Thank you for the recommendation. DD has stopped wanting to re-read Mo Willems' Piggie and Elephant books but she still goes back to P.D. Eastman's books. Her favorite is The Best Nest and when she builds nest out of pillows and blankets, she asks me to come take a look at her best nest. Sam and the Firefly is another favorite.

I'm struggling to accept DD's latest choices when it comes to early chapter books. She discovered those horrible Disney Fairy books (not the real chapter books but early readers levels 3/4 and they are awful) and she has decided that she likes Nate the Great after a slow start. While the latter is much better written than the former and does not feature curvy half-naked fairies, it's written for 1st grade and 2nd grade boys who tend to think girls are icky; so, per the course, girl characters in the books are depicted to be one-dimensional and creepy. There aren't that many Disney Fairy books so it's not like that phase could last that much longer but there are 26 Nate the Great books and we have at least 15+ more to go.

On a positive note, she is going through Arnold Lobel books like Owl at Home. I thought for awhile that she bypassed them forever but I catch her reading his titles on her reading chair and chuckling by herself these days. I'm thinking that perhaps, she wasn't ready for his sense of humor until recently.

I read The 100 Dresses this morning and it was a good reminder that DD might be a reader but she is nowhere ready for "real" books. I honestly don't know what she should be reading for the next couple of years. Thankfully, she still enjoys picture books but I want to find her appropriate quality chapter books but they are so hard to come by.

I, Nate the Great, am going to eat pancakes and think.

Don't forget the spin off series with his cousin the girl...makes more than 26.

Cam Jansen is even better....click.

And I want to say at this stage try Mercy Watson, who is a porcine wonder, by Kate dicamillo.

DD likes Mercy Watson but can't read them completely by herself yet…. Though Mana I bet your DD could. I know the fairy books your talking about and agree. DD loves them too (though she only can read the level 3 ones if I have read it to her a few times). I do like Pinkalicious & Fancy Nancy more… at least they are clothed . They are level 1 but part of the "I can read" series so still in the I, J, K, and some L reading range (depending on the book). And the made-up words in Pinkalicious give her a challenge & so do the vocab words in Fancy Nancy, which we both like. DD is over Piggie & Elephant too but there was a while when she loved them. She actually collected them a few months ago & took them into her little sister's room.

Mana: I bet your DD could read the Magic Treehouse series chapter books now. Have you tried those?

Sweetie: I am going to look up Cam Jansen. Had heard of Nate the Great but didn't even attempt because DD is so girl-focused. Probably a little too hard at this point but good to look into.

Like I said Nate has a girl cousin...I would read a few Nate the great (the first, and then a couple where the girl cousin works with him and then read the books only with the girl for some reason I think her name is Sheila maybe.

Cam Jansen is a girl who has a photographic memory...she has a boy side kick.

It is funny about girls who are all about girls and boys who are only into books with boys...my boys couldn't care less...it was all about the story and reading.

try the A to Z mysteries and their younger spin offs the Calendar series - both have girls and boys that are friends. Same with the magic school bus original picture books and chapter books.

DeHe

Oh and I forgot there are two levels of Cam Jansen...Cam Jansen and Young Cam Janson. When we found them my older son was already past the young Cam Jansen level so we never bothered with those.

My younger son went from Bob books to Biscuit books to Charlotte's Web in the blink of an eye.

Just looked up Young Cam Janson & they are exactly DD's reading level! I think she will love these stories. Adding a few to her Christmas! Thanks!!!

Thank you everyone for helping me problem solve this ongoing dilemma. I should have mentioned that DD has recently rediscovered Mother Goose and finally wants to read fairy tales and folklores. So developmentally, she seems to be in a very different place than Magic Tree House and A to Z mysteries. When she is ready and interested, she'll probably devour both series and I'm all for reading materials that build general knowledge and I don't think everything she reads has to be literacy masterpieces. We've tried Cam Jensen, Rainbow Fairies, the Lighthouse series by Rylant (DD said "Mommy, this is nothing like Henry and Mudge. This books is really, really sad."), and a few others but she hasn't really taken to any of them. She loved Charlotte's Web but we had to put it away after a major meltdown; she couldn't handle the emotional ups and downs.

I wasn't aware that Date DiCammilo had series for younger readers. We found a few at the library today so we'll give them a try. I know I'd enjoy them regardless of DD's reaction.

One series DD loves that is super fun for me is Dodsworth; it is kind-hearted and packed with a sense of adventure. So I know there are appropriate books that capture DD's imagination out there but it's a lot of investment of time and effort hunting them down so all the suggestions and help are very much appreciated!

Mana, have you tried Mr. Putter and Tabby? It's another series by Cynthia Rylant. I like it partly because there are so few elderly people in children's literature, and partly because they are hysterical. They seem to stand up well to rereading, too.

My son finds the double entendres in Amelia Bedelia hilarious. Highly recommend.

oooh Frog and Toad, maybe? so lovely, such gentle humour.

GHS, Mercy Watson was a bit hit. In her own words, "It was fantastic."

BTW, if your DD can comfortably read Fancy Nancy books but not willing to read Mercy Watson with help, that might be more about interest than ability. Is she a perfectionist who prefer to practice at her comfort level?

ElizabethN, you're spot on. Mr. Putter and Tabby is one of a handful of series DD is willing to reread. In fact, we checked out Mr. Putter & Tabby Makes a Wish for the 3rd time last week. It's DD's second favorite after Henry and Mudge. Other Rylant series didn't fare too well.

aquinas, your DS is so sweet. My DD, I'm afraid, is a bit more cynical and she more or less rolled her eyes when we read the original Amelia Bedelia. I still borrowed Merry Christmas Amelia Bedelia a few days ago just in case that she is in holiday spirit enough to enjoy it.

doubtfulguest, one of the first books DD read on her own was Mouse Soup so I was hoping she'd eventually pick up Frog and Toad and we have the box set but so far, she hasn't even gotten the books out of the box.

*****

I am going to try to get over my reservations about her recent book choices. As long as she is not reading something that is actively harmful (the Disney fairy books are pushing this criteria), I am going to let her choose on her own at the library. Instead of arguing with her there, I'm going to start replacing her toddler-era books with "real" books slowly but surely.

What is frustrating about the stage she is at now is that she reads 2 to 5 of these shorter books per day every day so that is a lot of books she goes through and I can't locate new books fast enough. So while I have no intention of pushing her into harder, longer, more complex books, she will literally run out of books she likes (she's picky) at this reading level sooner than later. I'm okay with letting her read picture books only but she wants to have a "novel" in her hand. Sigh. Have I ever mentioned that one of her favorite stories of all time is Goldilocks and the Three Bears?

OP, sorry for the extensive thread hijack. I hope you find many of the recommendations made by others helpful.

If she has not read it, even though it's a picture book, I very strongly recommend Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs by Mo Willems. DS5 laughs so hard at this book that he cannot breathe.

Oh, and you might also look at Bubba and Beau, which is a different author but the same illustrator as Mr. Putter and Tabby. We also think these are a lot of fun. You will find yourself developing a southern accent when you read them, though, unless you have one already.

ElizabethN, that is my favorite Mo Willems' book. I know the subtext of poking fun at Norwegians isn't all that politically correct but I couldn't help but find it hilarious. I read it to DD when it was first published so she was only 2.3? I think I should read it to her again. She was too busy spotting Pigeon throughout the book that I'm not sure if she was paying attention to much else.

I requested all three Bubba and Beau books from our library. Thank you I love these gentle yet funny books written by real authors and I can tell just by looking at the sample pages on Amazon that they're her kind of books.

Hi all just wanted to say thanks for all the tips. Dd3 is now hooked on reading eggs, though gets incredibly frustrated that its a linear program and she can't explore as per her interests.....
Anyway we stumbled into finding out that if we acted out stories she got right into them which has now opened up the door to reading basic picture books which I guess is helping her read. Anyway off to make another new post now :-)

Sorry I'm being so piecemeal on suggestions here, but have you tried Oliver Pig and Amanda Pig? Or Little Bear? I keep wracking my brain for ideas that are like the ones you say she likes. :-)

mana: Very good point. I just looked up the reading level for Mercy and it is level K. Most of the Pinkalicious books that she loves are level J & some K. To be honest we haven't read Mercy Watson in over a month and the thought hadn't occurred to me that she may actually be able to read them now. We are mid-move and I only packed one Mercy Watson for this month when everything is in storage. I think I will pull it out tomorrow to see if she is interested.

She IS a perfectionist and really wants and expects everything to be easy. I am really worried about that but don't know what to do! She says she is not interested if she needs to work at something. Then weeks later will come back to it and be able to do it well. Its almost as if she tosses it around in her head until she is ready. Same thing in school, home, & even things like walking/talking (when she was a baby) ect ect. Not sure if there is anything to do about that or if that is just her personality.

ElizabethN, these recommendations are the best early Christmas presents for both DD and me. Thank you so much for thinking of DD. We picked up both a Bubba and Beau book and the original Oliver Pig story, illustrated by Lobel. We only got to Bubba and Beau as she also wanted to re-read her Rainbow Fairy books (beginning chapter book version) but DD recognized the illustration from Mr. Putter right away and wanted to read it over and over and over. We haven't gotten to Oliver Pig but the illustrations are beautiful.

GHS, I hear you and on top of everything else, I have SO saying things like "Oh, as long as she practices (music/ballet/handwriting/etc) for a few minutes, she'll figure out the rest while she sleeps" right in front of her. Grrrrrr.

Those level 1 Pinkalicious and Fancy Nancy readers are actually hard to read; IMO, not that much easier than level 2 Frog and Toad and alike. Have you tried the level 2 Rainbow Magic books? They have color illustrations throughout the book like picture books but the readability of text is somewhere between Fancy Nancy and real chapter books. If she can read the Young Cam Jansen books, she can definitely read them but then she might end up getting hooked on Rainbow Magic Fairy series which go on and on forever!

I'm so glad she's liking them! There is so much great children's literature out there - the trick is just to find it. These really have gentle humor that goes over so well. Wait until you get to the story where Oliver's Mama gets them dressed to go outside and play in the snow. (I don't remember if it's in the book you have or a later one.) Absolutely pitch perfect.

She won't be able to read them herself yet, but you might want to try Milly Molly Mandy for readalouds. My DD adored those at her age.

It took me awhile to get our hands on a copy of Milly Molly Mandy from the library but we've read the first chapter last night and both DD and I loved it. The last book we read was the Enormous Crocodile and while DD couldn't get enough of it, Milly Molly Mandy was such a refreshing change from it and all the other chapter books we've been reading. The reading level is just right for DD (she cannot manage the whole book by herself but it is perfect for taking turns and read aloud) so we'll be adding the series to our permanent collection.

ElizabethN, you're the children's librarian we wish we had at our library

I'm so glad she likes it.

No one has mentioned My Father's Dragon by Ruth Gannett. There are two sequels. This was the first chapter book read aloud to each of my three children. Later they went back and read them again to themselves. One fun thing is the map in the front where you can follow the progress of Elmer's adventures and wonder about the things he hasn't gotten to yet.

hi all just a quick update - dd is still "learning to read" and refuses to share any of her knowledge - which is fine, either she can read fine or nothing is sinking in at all :-) however I thought I'd put it out the about the Churchmice series, which have grabbed her attention (Graham Oakley), she misses some of the finer points of the stories but at last she is wanting to read books - yahoo!