Bob Books - Tools for Learning to Read

I first learned about Bob Books when I worked for one of the largest book retailers. Parents would come in looking for them frantically. So of course when Ricky was 4, I bought them and tried to introduce them to him.

He hated them almost immediately and one time had a fit so big that I never brought them out for months. Earlier this summer, Mark introduced Halo - an inappropriate (age 17) video game on the xbox to Ricky. I decided to grasp the opportunity and bribe my son to learn to read and his reward would be time on Halo. It totally worked.

Ricky has now mastered 16 Bob Books so far and knows many sight words. He enjoys reading these books to his grandmothers, his aunts, uncles, and anyone who will listen. Learning them has boosted his confidence at school and about himself in general and it's really great to see. It's cool to be able to read a book by yourself!

For those of you who may not know what Bob Books are, they are little books - about 8 pages each, that build on reading. They have to be read in order - as each book builds on the previous one in terms of sight words, and the sounds. The box set Ricky has almost finished is the short vowels. He has 2 more books to go to finish the 18 book box set. The second box set has the long vowels. I bought these larger box sets from Costco earlier this year.

I totally recommend these books for parents to do with their kids to supplement what they are learning in school.

Photo borrowed from http://www.bobbooks.com/img/mfbb-1.jpg

Teaching Your Preschooler to Read? A Gizmo For You: Leapfrog's Tag Reading System

Ricky will be 5 years old next month and goes to 4 year old preschool. Since I stay home full time, I've taken it upon myself to teach him at home. He enjoys numbers way more than reading. He's been able to count to 200 since he was 3 and finished the preschool math website in 2 weeks - 1,400 math problems! But reading? Forget it. He just tells me flat out that "mom, I wanna do numbers. Not this."

Right now I've been trying to teach him some phonics, sight words, and concepts that will teach him how to read.

So he got this for Christmas. So far, he has The Cat in the Hat, Po's Tasty Training, and the set of Short Vowels. I've sat down with him and done the Cat and Po books and it's pretty nice. The pen will read each page to you. There is also games. I am kind of disappointed in the sense that I expected it to have an option where it reads each and every word to you as you run the pen across the words - but it doesn't do that. I don't know if the short vowels set does that yet - maybe it does. I'll have to review this again after he gets more books.

In any case, this is a great educational toy because it gets your child interested in independently reading or just simply sitting down with a book.

I'll blog again about this product later on when Ricky's used more books!

THE BEST Sticker Activity Book for Toddlers EVER!!!

If you have a toddler, this book and other variations of it are an absolute must. This book keeps my 2 1/2 year old busy for 20-30 minute intervals at a time and it is incredibly fun and educational.

There are sections of this book devoted to ABCs -uppercase and lower case, Phonics, Numbers, Counting, Colors, Shapes, Trucks, Animals, and Vocabulary. There are stickers that go along with corresponding workbook-type pages and you sit with your child, peel off the stickers he/she wants and have him/her put it in the right spot. This reinforces so many different important concepts that they need to learn at this age.

The book is so big that it will take your toddler months to actually finish the book, but there are so many different sections that he/she will never be bored. Admittedly, Ricky is devoted to the Trucks section and we always start there but then we do manage to navigate to other sections of the book.

I have seen variations of this book by the same publisher and I am hoping and praying to God that they manage to produce more kinds. This is by far the best activity book I have come across for Ricky. It is engaging and so very educational. I have recommended this book to all my mommy friends. But the funny part is that I have only seen these books sold at Toys R Us. Not sure why.

The Racecar Alphabet by Brian Floca

This book is a big favorite of Ricky's. The book tells the story of racecars and each page starts with a letter of the alphabet and the action described has several words that start with the corresponding letter. Hence, the phonics lesson has begun! Ricky identifies each letter on each page and listens to me read the page - and then I review the sound the letter makes for him. The rhyming is super cute and engaging to the parent and child. Thinking about possibly purchasing this book for him - or telling Santa.