Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Elementary School what is your first grader reading?

My son has enjoyed the A to Z mysteries.

Ah, memories.

When I was in first grade, I was reading Encyclopedia Brown and the Nancy Drew books. And some other mystery series that will come to me in due time because I got into a fight with the first grade teacher about my reading ability.

Edit: And I just found it. The Three Investigators - Alfred Hitchcock series. I remember really liking those books.

For the life of me, I have no idea why I was reading Nancy Drew. I didn't realize the Hardy Boys existed until years later.

I think you'll find that "fairly comprehensive" and "third grade level" are contradictions. If the books is written at a third grade reading level, it's also written at a typical third grade cognitive level, which means the book will be short, riddled with pictures, and not very deep.

What about the Horrible Science books? I don't know know the reading level off-hand, I'm pretty sure it's higher than 3rd grade, but there are pictures and whatnot, so they might work.

The Horrible Science books might be the perfect combo - the jokes are so juvenile which of course makes them hysterical - but the science is spot on and really good. My only problem with them is that DS is learning to spell English English not American English!!!! He is slowly working his way through the box of 18 we bought him, at breakfast he informed me that you can break a magnet by running a big electric current through it - I am a little worried he is now looking for a big electric current in the house LOL

We started with this one:
The stunning science of everything

its a stand along hard cover, separate from the smaller books, which covers a ton of stuff

and I always recommend the brainwaves!
brainwaves

and the basher books:
simon basher

sorry if I am repeating - didn't go back to check the thread!

DeHe

Horrible Science is wonderful. DS6 really liked the Cartoon History of the Universe, Vol. 1, and it should be accessible to someone with roughly third-grade reading skills. We also got him the Cartoon Guide to Physics for Christmas, but I don't know whether he's read it yet.

I found one of the Horrible Science books last week at a used book store in town. It is the Chaotic Chemistry one. So far he loves it! I think it is written around a 5th-6th grade level so he likes to read it out loud with me but he has really been enjoying it. So far we are only 50 pages or so into it because we keep having to stop for discussions or experiments. We'll definitely be ordering more of these. Thanks for the heads up everyone!

My DD6 is currently reading the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series.

I'm going to post this here because I think it's related and probably doesn't warrant a whole thread. My son will be going in to first however he has only just turned 5. He reads magic tree house, flat stanley, etc but we recently started on Ramona/Henry and similar things. My question is when do you allow them to read slightly more mature books? For example my son still thinks "stupid" is a "bad word" because he is not allowed to say it in prek so even some topics in Ramona or diary of a wimpy kid seem a little old to me. Do you just read with them and talk about it or should I wait 6 months or a year and then a little older books will be fine? Maybe I shouldn't worry about it being too old?

My dd6 read 40 rainbow magic books in the last two weeks. She will NOT read anything challenging. But that's okay. She loves to read!