BOB type books as Read-alouds?

[shawthorne44]

I like to be prepared.  CVC words is beyond her.  But, when she's ready I want to be prepared.  I bought "Animal Antics" from "Now I'm Reading".  It is basically a BOB book, but reported to be a better story. 

 

DD always goes with my husband to get the mail.  She always carries something back.  Particularly light packages like books.  Animal Antics came and she told me that a book came "But it had the wrong name on it".  It didn't say her name or "Mom" or "Dad" on it.  But, she was still convinced that it was a book for her.  So, since it was for her she wanted me to read the book right then. I read the first book.  Then I told her that they were there for when she was ready to read.  She told me she couldn't read yet.  I told her that was fine, but that I was going to set aside the books until she was ready.  But, she wanted me to read the second book to her.  I really can't resist "Read to Me", so I read the second.  Now she wants the third. 

 

So, what do I do?  Do I read them to her?  I worry she'll memorize them, and I'm trying to avoid whole-word learning. 

[carriede]

So, what do I do? Do I read them to her? I worry she'll memorize them, and I'm trying to avoid whole-word learning.

I worry about memorization too. I should have saved the Cat in the Hat. :/

 

I have the first set of BOB books in my closet, similar to what you wanted to do. I guess you just have to ask yourself if you'd be willing to sacrifice these books as read alouds and buy something else to save, or if you need to just tell her no.

 

FWIW, my DS knows about the BOB books. I told him "no". :)

[wendyroo]

When my 2 year old asks me to read the Bob books I tell him that instead of reading them I will tell him the story.  Then I tell him a story based on the pictures that is not really what is written on the page.  If he asks me to read the words I temptingly tell him that they are for big kids who can read and that some day he will be big enough to read the big boy story.  My only worry is that when the time comes for him to read the actual words that he will be disappointed.  My stories are much more interesting than the actual words, if I do say so myself (obviously because I am not limited by selective phonics).

 

Wendy

[Jackie]

My daughter memorizes easily, so I didn't read anything I meant to be for her learning.

[73349]

I've saved the Animal Antics for him to read to me (and now he's started on them), but you could easily pick up a set of Miss Rhonda's Readers or something else at the same level if you have to.

 

Or read them once and then put them somewhere out of sight until you need them. They're not that catchy; for DS, there is more of an issue of guessing based on the pictures. If a few months go by, she's not likely to remember any more than the pictures show.

[shawthorne44]

OK, out of sight they go. 

[shawthorne44]

I hid the books.  

 

Cute update.  

Saturday she dug out some BOB books.  This is the official BOB books, not the set I recently bought.   I sometimes buy milk crates of kid's books at garage sales, so we have some random samples of BOB books, but nothing from the first set.  She brought them to me while I was waking up and "read" a few to me.  She seemed to be mostly using the pictures.  

I also thought it was amusing that she seems to have figured out my trick of asking "Which book do you want?" while putting the one I want her to pick at the top.  She brought me 7 or 8 BOB books, asked me which one I wanted her to read to me, and then held the books tightly together so that I had to select the top one.  

[bakpak]

 Hmmm...I would never hide books, but I guess I would have been okay with just buying another set when my DD was ready to read. If she's interested, I would read them slowly with her, sounding out words with her until she got the concept. I think if she's asking, now's the time to go with it.

 

You can read them as 'The c-a-t s-a-t on the b-e-d." where you're saying the words not too slowly, but slow enough to enunciate all the separate letter sounds. That way you're not encouraging whole word memorization except with the sight words. It's good for their listening skills/phonics anyway. I did this while talking some as well when my DD was first learning to blend at age 2, and my daughter immediately understood that when I said 'kuh-a-tuh' it meant cat. Of course, she already knew her sounds at the time.

 

I've been listening to kids reading at my daughter's school, and most are phonetic readers, but 1 little 3-yr-old boy is an early reader and he can NOT grasp any words that I help sound out phonetically. He's extremely bright, but his learning style is just not geared that way. But, he memorizes on sight after one repetition and we just go with it. Anyway, I just wanted to point out that trying to get a child to read phonetically is ideal IMO, but there's no reason to hold back kids who are desperate to read and are whole-word readers. Hopefully he'll mature into understand phonetics at some point, but I'm glad he's able to enjoy reading now while he's highly interested.

 

 

[boscopup]

Can you just go get some picture books from the library that are way more interesting, to get her mind off the other books? :)

 

That said, I don't really read early readers like that out loud usually, BUT I'd be ok with reading them once and then putting them away. Memorizing books isn't a bad thing, in my mind, and there are a gazillion early readers at the library to choose from, so I'm not that worried about memorizing all the easy readers before the kids learn to read. If you're using a phonics program later, you'll see whether your child can really read or not, and the memorized books will just help with fluency.

[shawthorne44]

Oh, she has a ton of books already, and she goes to the library once a week.  In a few months we will be moving to a very small town, and I was dismayed to notice that she has more books than the library.  She just doesn't want to let any book be unread.  

I really hadn't thought she'd find them interesting.  At the moment her favorite books are the "Long books" as she calls them.  Books with pretty pictures and >50 words on a page.  So, stick figures and ~4 words per page would seem to be uninteresting.  

[SKL]

More likely, I would use the first book repeatedly and encourage her to engage with it and pick up a few skills.  Then see how many of those skills she is able to apply to the 2nd book.

 

Yes, she might memorize that particular book, but in the grand scheme of things, that is not a big problem.

 

I've never been picky about this book being for phonetic reading, this other one for read-alouds.  But I would not use a very simple book for a read-aloud, unless it had some other really awesome aspect to it such as great picture reading, vocabulary building, etc.

 

Personally I despised the Bob books.  No offense.  ;)  There are much better phonetic materials out there IMO.

[DhanyaCali]

I know the feeling! We have the Usborne Ted and Friends phonics reader collection and my son has memorized the whole book! Soooo we won't be using that as a sounds it out reader.

 

Also your daughter sounds a lot like my oldest, outsmarting me at every turn! 

 

I hide/rotate books all the time, sounds like she has more than enough literature to satisfy! Hopefully your new library has inter library loans, then you can use it like a free amazon  :thumbup1:

[happycc]

I didn;t like the Bob books. I liked Pathway readers. Very little sight words in one reading session and when there are, it is repeated a lot so the kids get it and not get stuck. Simple black and white books. Christian book based but the early readers have nothing about church or God but it is based on a family cooperating a lot. 

 

 

These books helped several of my readers move past the CVC stage when other readers did not without memorizing the stories. 

[shawthorne44]

I will look into the Pathway readers.  I like the Bob books concept, but they seemed a little lacking.  Which is why I went with "Now I am reading".  I don't know what I think of them yet, since they are in hiding.

 

Fortunately, we will be OK on the library front.  We are staying in the same county and can keep the library card.  A few years ago anyone in the state could get a library at my current awesome library.  Then it was only anyone within the County could get one.  Now I think it is only certain cities within the county.  I don't know if my future town is on the list, but I've never had renew the library card, so we should be good.  The librarians adore DD, and they are fond of DH and I. Although the good library will be 30 miles away vs. 1.7 miles.  

 

Their adoration of DD actually back-fired a bit on us the other day.  DD ruined a library book during nap-time.  She bent back the book and the middle pages popped out.  We take that very seriously.  The rule is that any money she is given and any coins she picks up off the floor are hers.  We told her she had to take in all her money and ask the librarians if that was enough money to pay for the book.  She was so adorable that they couldn't help but smile and coo over her, even though they'd been asked to act sad and disappointed.