Congratulations on teaching your son to read! I hope he is my class this year!

Visit your local library, there are oodles of books for him there!

When your son does start kindergarten, watch his backpack for the reading club flyers. You can buy affordable books for him and his teacher can give you suggestions based on his reading level.

There are so many good books for beginning readers that it is difficult to come up with a good list. Consider what type of things interest him and try to find some books about those subjects.

Donald Crews has a long list of books that appeal to boys with titles such as Freight Train.

Margaret Hillert has another long list of books for beginning readers.

School is starting in a few weeks. When you go in to meet his teacher, ask her for some recommendations (she will be doing assessments during the first weeks of school to determine his reading level and then it will be much easier for you to get books on his “level”) or stop in the school media center and have a chat with the media specialist…she will be happy to see you!

For websites, starfall.com would be appropriate. razkids.com is great, but it is not free. Personally, I prefer my beginning readers to use books for reading so that they become very comfortable with the concepts of print and how to handle books with table of contents and indexes, etc. We do use some websites such as starfall and razkids (which offers leveled readers)

Please can he be in my classroom????

When my son was little I used the Bob Books for begining readers and it was very easy. The books were developed by a teacher. He also read Dr. Seuss (Hop on Pop) and books by P.D. Eastman (Go, Dog, Go!). Other good books are the Frog and Toad series, Amelia Bedelia series, Magic Tree House series, Little Bear, Nate the Great (my son’s favorite when he was starting to read). The Step Into Reading books are also good because you can move up to a different level and there are many interesting subjects not just fiction. Once your son has this covered you can start with chapter books like the Magic School Bus or the I Can Read collection. He should read for 30 minutes each night with you during homework time. Then, at night while in bed I suggest you read to him at least 15 minutes from a chapter book (Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Stuart Little, The Giving Tree, Charlottes Web). I would read a book to my son that he could not read by himself. This is how I started him on Harry Potter and now that he’s older he’s read Eragon and the Chronicles of Narnia by himself. My son does not love books like I do but I buy him books that I know he would enjoy especially if they are about spy kids, dragons, fantasy, the titanic, houdini, civil war, etc. I buy him books for the summer, Christmas and on his birthday every year. He reads them plus the ones required by his teacher.

I would try the following sites:

starfall.com

ReadingA-Z.com

pbskids.org

gamequarium.com

They are full of learning games (reading mostly, but other subjects as well).

I would also look into Brown Bear, Brown Bear and other similar Bill Martin, Jr. books. Anything with repetitive text is excellent for beginning readers!

courdoroy 😀

i used to love that book

that and anything dr suess