In Gloria's Place I can be a mom, a woman, a daughter, a wife, a writer, a customer, an observer and a person all at the same time, without judgement or remorse.
A few weeks ago if someone had asked me how-to tips to teach a child to read my answer would have been, “First teach your child the alphabet, the alphabet sounds and read to your child every day.” Today my answer would include, “Then introduce your child to the Bob Books collection”.
When my package of Bob Books Set 1 arrived, my oldest daughter, who is in kindergarten, had just arrived home from school. Her 7-year-old friend was over too. I opened the package of books in front of the girls (including my youngest who is three years old) and their curious little heads all began to look over my shoulder to see what I was opening.
Immediately I began to read to them. Simple and short I doubted that these little books could help my daughter learn to read, but I was pleasantly surprised. Reading and pointing to each word as I read it I could hear my oldest (the one in kindergarten), which sat beside me, repeating and sounding out the words I read to her.
The BOB Books collection, text by Bobby Lynn Maslen, pictures by John R. Maslen, comes in 5 sets. Set 1 contains 12 books each with only 12 pages of simple words. The first page of each book introduces the new sounds that appear in the book with a drawing of a word that begins with that particular letter. Each book has a simple story and cute line drawings that children can relate to. My daughter uses the image ideas to draw her own pictures now.
Both my daughters found the stories to be silly and at times funny. My oldest was capable of understanding what each story in each book was about. For example, in book 11 my daughter tells me excitedly, as I near the end of the book, “I told you she was pregnant!” The Mat character sitting on the Sam character in book 2 made her giggle and the fact that the pink pig and red hen in book 10 were not colored in intrigued her.
In addition the sentences and sounds are repetitive which helps children learn quickly. And as the books progresses the sentences and titles and words progress to longer words as well. For example, books 1-4 consist mostly of 3 letter words and short sentence. By Book 9-12 there are pages with more than one sentence per page and at the same time punctuation, sounds, numbers and colors are introduced too.
By the 3rd day of reading Bob Books to my children my oldest began to take the liberty to read on her own. In fact on that day as I read to them and at the same time jotted down notes about the 7th book for this review my oldest grabbed the 8th book from my lap and began to try to pronounce the title. I heard her loudly and proudly say, “Riff!”
“Ruff” I kindly corrected.
“Ruff” she repeated and then continued reading. “And Muff,” she said.
“Good job! Muff and Ruff!” I proudly told her, smiled at her and then continued to jot down notes for books 7 with my right ear cocked in the direction of her voice as she flipped through the rest of the book’s pages pronouncing as best she could the 3 letter words and simple sentences. These are the kind of books kids learning to read want to pick up and just read all on their own.
Over the next few days it was my daughter who was the one reading and she was reading to us (her sister, father and I). At first she read with some difficulty. She confused words like Mac and Mag or bag and dog. Other times she was too confident, she would skip over words entirely, but then corrected herself when we were too slow to correct her. Recently, I heard her tell her dad “Oh yeah! These are easy!” as she saw him walking with the set of books upstairs to listen to her read before bed time.
I would love to get my hands on Bob Books sets 2-5. I thank Mother Talk for introducing me to BOB Books Set 1, Beginning Readers and allowing me to review it. I plan to introduce this set of books to my oldest daughter’s teacher. I only hope she likes them. I feel they are much more educational than the go-along computer books she handed out to us (the parents) at the beginning of the year to practice with our kids at home. The environmentalist in me only wishes that the author and the publishing company would print Bob Books on recycled paper and hopes that one day the author could come up with a set of beginner reading books that teaches kids about recycling.
My Favorite Books of Set 1:
Land and The Fat Fat Cat
Sam
Dot and The Dog
10 Cut-Ups
