Bob Books Review: The Ultimate Beginner’s Reading Series
Disclaimer: I am NOT an affiliate for Bob Books. This is our personal, honest experience with the program.
My favorite series to teach children to read with is the Bob Book Sets. I absolutely recommend them! Finding a book series that worked for us was tough. There are so many options out there that look fun and exciting but are confusing for beginner readers. That is not the case with Bob Books. Both my daughter and son have used, and are using, Bob Books to learn to read alongside Learn To Read With EP. Let’s talk about everything I love about Bob Books!
1. Simple pictures – The mainly black and white sketches are just enough to see what’s going on but are not too distracting. While I love a good picture book, keeping it short and sweet keeps us moving along.
2. Flowing words – Set 1 starts with specific letter sounds that are mostly 3 letter, CVC, words. These words are great for beginners to sound out. Learning letter sounds is an important first step before starting to read. If you are noticing your child needs more help with letter sounds, take a step back from reading and check out Tools For Teaching The Alphabet. Trying to push forward when your child doesn’t know their letter sounds, no matter what age, will only cause more frustration and feeling of failure.
3. Few words – It’s very daunting to stare at a bunch of words on a piece of paper that you don’t know. As soon as I would present something with more than just a few words to my daughter, she checked out. It was too overwhelming. Bob books start with very few words. This makes reading uncomplicated and less overwhelming. My daughter quickly became excited over the little successes that Bob books brought. Each word led to a new page, each page led to a new book and each book led to the completion of a set. These quick books and successes made her feel so good! She was excited to keep going.
3. Gradual progression – Each set focuses on a concept. They are meant to be read in order to create fluency and confidence. My children felt very accomplished after each page, book and set! I love that the words in the beginning books can all be sounded out. As you get further into the sets, they introduce rhyming, longer words, sight words and slightly longer, more complex stories. Moving onto silent e and vowel combinations. I feel the Bob books do a great job at moving slowly onto the next concept. My children never felt too overwhelmed to continue.
4. Organized box sets – Our bookshelves are stuffed so any help organizing them is really nice. I LOVE having these box sets of Bob books. They fit a ton of books in such a small area and look incredibly neat. Plus, they are easy to carry and travel with. We do a lot of traveling so being able to fit a box of books into our backpacks is super cool!
5. They work – Simple as that. I can’t tell you how many books I have on our bookshelves that haven’t been touched because they don’t have a good flow for beginner readers. Bob books WORK! My kids love them and enjoy reading them because THEY CAN READ THEM! They are easy to follow and make my kids laugh. They can usually get though 3 or 4 before deciding they need a break.
6. Variety – There are many different sets to choose from and most have the option to buy hardcovers. Here are the sets that we have used. Click on each image to find it on Amazon where you can also find tons of positive reviews!
Stage 1:
Stage 2:
Stage 3:
There are many more options available on amazon or on the Bob Books website. These are just the sets I have personally enjoyed with my children. Bob Books are a wonderful pick to add to your homeschool resources. Whether it’s to sit down in a quiet corner alone or on Grandma’s lap, my kids continue to pick Bob Books to practice their reading.
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