Grades K-2
Chanticleer and the Fox
The Little Bear Treasury
Catholic Children's Treasure Box Books 1-6, story of St. Therese
And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?
The Story About Ping
The Moon Seems to Change
This book, through simple illustrations and very readable text, gives young children (approximately Kindergarten thru third grade) an excellent explanation of the moon and the changes we can easily observe in it during a month. What often seem like complex concepts - the phases of the moon and its movement relative to the earth - are made very understandable through the text and a very simple experiment involving an orange stuck onto a pencil (a styrofoam ball stuck onto a chopstick worked quite well for us with less mess) and a flashlight.
Bob Books Fun!
This second set was just released and wasn't around when I taught my oldest to read. Although she did fine without it, I thought that the additional practice on this basic level was very helpful for my son (who has just finished this second set). Like the first set, the stories are designed entirely for the purpose of practicing beginning reading skills by introducing sounds in an intelligent order. The stories are very simple and usually quite silly. This set does introduce several two-letter phonograms - "ar" (book 3), "aw" (book 3) "ow" (book 4), "ou" (book 7), "oo" (book 12).
Bob Books
The Bob Books and subsequent titles (five sets of small reading booklets in all) are sets of very small, stapled booklets with black and white line drawings and colorful covers, which contain very simple stories. They are approximately $15 per set (although I've seen them at Sam's Club and Half-Price books for less). Each set comes in a colorful box with two little cardboard finger puppets and a cardboard puppet theatre.