Scholastic book: Go! Go! Go!

He saw the 3 books which my friend loaned to us (YL, thank you so much!), lying on his table. I think what particularly caught his interest was the title of the Level 1 book "Go! Go! Go!". The word "go" is one of his earliest sight words.

I was taken aback when he read the entire book in one sitting. Not content with that, he picked up the next book, which is Level 3 (cos Level 2 is missing) and read the title "Stop the Tot!"

The Level 1 book is very simple, with just a few highly repetitive words, a few decodeable words and uses pictures in place of harder words. For e.g. instead of the sentence "I see the clock", it is "I see the (picture of clock is shown)".

He didn't manage to read it fluently 100% by himself. There were just a few words I hadnt introduced to him yet. For e.g. "see", "dad". But he could decode "dad" and when I told him the pronounciation of "see", he picked it up fast.

There were 15 pages in that book & I was amazed he could finish it so fast.

The Level 3 book was read slower than Level 1 even though he knew the sight word "stop" very well and could decode "tot". He lost interest by the time we were on page 8, the middle of the book. It might be because papa came into the room & distracted him, or because he got tired. It was slightly past his bedtime.

I'm very happy. I'm very encouraged with what I saw tonight. It gives me the motivation to do even more. I'm sure there are other kids his age who can read better than him & others who may not. That is not my concern. I do not care to compare him with other kids. I'm just very happy to see him progress on the road to reading. I'm very happy that God's provided wisdom & creativity & resources & blessed the effort put in to teach him to read.

I'm keen on grabbing this opportunity where he's so interested to learn to read. Unfortunately, there's only one book per Level in that Scholastic At Home Phonic Reading Program. My friend will be purchasing another Scholastic series next week & I'm eager to glance through to see if it's suitable. I had a preview of 2 pages & have 2 concerns. First, the words look smaller than the series he read tonight. Second, there's no colour (just black, white & red) and illustration is not appealing (something like stick drawing).

If he's not interested in the new series, I'll have to give Peter & Jane Ladybird series a try. At the moment, I'm reluctant to do so as I feel it's not suitable yet. So, that leaves me with 2 things:
(1) to introduce more high frequency (sight) words in various activities
(2) preparing for the Montessori Blue series

I'm tired but will go to bed tonight a happy mum.