Reading is an essential part of the first-grade curriculum. Your child will start with easy readers or just one-sentence stories at the beginning of first grade. Your child will have progressed to short stories and more difficult “easy readers” by the end of the year. As a homeschool mom, you know your child isn’t the only one reading. There are many opportunities for storytimes to inspire a love of reading in your child by reading them more complex books. Many of these books have captivating pictures or themes to draw young learners in.
Lola By Sarah Cullen and Carmen Ellis
Two fun authors from Australia wrote Lola. Their about page says these ladies love the ocean, and they have an entire series of ocean-themed books geared towards elementary kids. Lola, specifically, is a charming book. It is dedicated to a little girl named Lola, who loved mermaids and bravely fought cancer but sadly lost her battle. Zuzana Svobodva did the illustrations in this book, and they are impeccable. It would be a perfect read-aloud book for your homeschooler if you are in the middle of a rhyming unit for kindergarten or first-grade phonics classes. There are rhyming words to spot on every page.
Lola centers around a little mermaid who isn’t very brave. One day her dad gives her a bravery bracelet to help her have courage. Unfortunately, she loses the bracelet while out playing with her friends. Then she goes on a journey alone to find her way back home after losing her friend group. She talks to the sea creatures she meets along the way, and they help her find her courage. One aspect of this book that Christian homeschoolers may not agree with is the repetitive message that our courage and strength comes from within us instead of from God. Another aspect is that the little mermaid talks to every sea creature she meets even though they are strangers. The book itself has a combination of easy-to-read and tricky words. However, a second-grader could probably tackle it themselves. Overall, this is a really well-done book with an uplifting message.
A Frog Ate My Sandwich! By Christine Durkin
A creative mom and grandmother wrote A Frog Ate My Sandwich. Durkins about page says that she retired from her career and found her love of writing, which is such an inspiring story. A Frog Ate My Sandwich is a very long and creative story that works best as a read-aloud story at the first-grade level. At the beginning of the book, I had hesitations because the writing style repeated the main character’s name repeatedly. However, after the first few pages, the story began to really flow. The Frog Ate My Sandwich is a heartwarming story about two boys who find a frog and play with it like typical boys. Caden finds the frog, and it hops into his lunch box, so he can show it to his friend Nate. They discover it is in his lunchbox on the bus ride to school, and of course, it makes tons of mischief when they arrive. Nate plays a prank on Caden, and the boys go home on the bus. They let the frog go at the end of the book instead of keeping it, which is a great message for kids—not to keep wild animals.
This book has a lot of text to it. It doesn’t have any specific educational value besides the moral lesson of letting wild animals go, so it is strictly just a read-aloud book for first-grade storytimes. This book could probably be read at the third-grade level independently. The illustrations of this book are bright and colorful, and it has an orange, blue and green theme to it. They are done by the talented full-time artist and illustrator Mousam Banerjee. There is a corresponding coloring book that goes along with the text you can get for your kiddos if they really like frogs. It is sold separately on amazon as The Frog Ate My Sandwich! Coloring Book. It has all of the text the normal book has, but your child can design the color scheme.
I Lost The Cake By WMH Readers
I Lost The Cake is part of the When Mom Is Happy Phonics Readers Collection. It is Reader 3AB. If your kids love Piggy and Elephant books by Mo Willems, they will also love I Lost the Cake. It has an adorable pig and a similar speech bubble style writing to the Mo Willems books. There are lots of fun characters, but the illustrations are simple. Simple illustrations are perfect for easy readers because it does not distract from the text. For I Lost The Cake, your child will work on one and two vowel words like cake, take, and sad. This book is not very long and would work well at the kindergarten level. Since it is a phonics reader, it was designed specifically for education. This book brings in all of Pete, the pig’s friends, and then Pete’s mom at the end. WMH Readers have a variety of phonics readers that cover:
- Letter names
- Consonant sounds
- Long vowel words
- Short vowel words
- Long and short vowel words
- Consonant digraphs
- Consonant blends
- Vowel combinations
If your child needs help with phonics-based concepts or a little extra reading practice, check out some of their great phonics readers. Many of them are available through the Kindle Unlimited program on Amazon, where you can check out 20 books at one time to read like a giant virtual library. You can also purchase some of them in paperback format.
The Princess and The Wolf by Brie Wetherby
I write a variety of easy readers and short stories for kids published on Amazon. The Princess and the Wolf is one of my bedtime stories for girls. It is about a little girl who escapes famine in her homeland and goes on a long journey. She travels through a magical purple forest for many years. In the forest, she meets a wolf and grows up to become a beautiful young lady. When she finally escapes the forest, she arrives in a beautiful land full of flowers. This land seems a little bit magical as a pond turns her into a mermaid but turns the wolf into a handsome young prince. The Princess and The Wolf is a short bedtime story for girls ages 4-8. It has a sparkling pink, blue, purple, and green color scheme. This book is simply a read-aloud book for storytime. It doesn’t have an educational tilt to it. You can get this book in ebook or paperback, and it is available to read for free through the Kindle Unlimited Program. If you are new to the Kindle Unlimited Program, there are a few excellent discounts you can check out:
Easy Paper Airplanes For Kids By Exodus Illustration
Easy Paper Airplanes isn’t a book for reading, but it is still educational. It teaches kids ages 6-8 how to fold over 10 airplanes. The airplane tutorials are straightforward to follow, and the book is very clearly illustrated. The simple illustrations guide kids on how to do easy paper airplane models at first, and then they progressively become more challenging. You can do so many things with this book to incorporate it into your homeschool lesson plans. For instance, you could use it for art class and have your child decorate a piece of paper with a fun pattern or color scheme before folding the planes. You could also test out which paper airplanes are most aerodynamic by folding several paper airplane styles and then having an airplane throwing competition. Easy Paper Airplanes is available through the Kindle Unlimited program, as an eBook for purchase, or as a paperback book on Amazon.
My Best Friend Hamster By Brie Wetherby
My Best Friend Hamster is another one of my books. It is an easy reader designed for first-grade girls ages 6-8. It centers around friends talking about what pets they like best and teaches kids to love their pets no matter what kind they have. This book focuses on teaching various sight words, similar to the Phonics Reader, I Lost The Cake by WMH Readers. The first-grade sight words include I, no, best, friend, going, my, and your. This book is currently available in ebook format and through the Kindle Unlimited program. It has a pink interior that girls love, and the illustrations are simplistic, so they don’t distract from the text. It is best for a book not to be too distracting when kids are trying to read. The story itself includes bunnies and hamsters that capture young girls’ attention.
You can find over 40 books by Brie Wetherby by checking out her Amazon author page.
Free Reading Log Printable For Kids
Are you trying to get your child to read more? Then, grab a free pink reading log printable from the Mommy-Daughter Love free printable library. It is fun to see how many books your child reads each week. There are up to five spaces a day that your child can cross off, so there is plenty of room for reading. Unlike other reading logs, this one is simple. There is no writing down the titles of books you have read. It is just crossing off one of the dots every time a book is read!
The free printable library contains lots of fun worksheets, schedules, and crafts for both moms and kids! It is the perfect free tool for any homeschool family with girls because most of the printables have a fun pink theme.
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