Bob Books Set 4 - Complex Words

Great beginner book

If you have a preschooler, kindergartner or even a struggling first grader you will not be sorry you purchase these books! My four yr old told me he wanted to read so we started with set 1 and I have all 5 boxed sets plus the Kindergarten sight words boxed set. Today my preschooler is reading at the same level my first grader was at the beginning of the school year; and my first grader was in the top 3/4 of his class! The books are perfect in every way. The start off using 3 letters a book, one sentence per page and gradually get more complex letter sounds and longer stories. My son WANTS to read and we read twice daily! I taught my now middle schooler how to read at age four also but I know it would've been a lot less stressful (for me) if I would have known about these books. My son practically taught himself to read these books! Just make sure that your child can recognize each letter and knows what sound it makes. We only knew short vowel sounds when we started these, now my son can read words like 'wonderful', 'bright', 'another', 'business' and more! DO NOT HESITATE, buy these for your child; and yourself!!

This is a great set and my daughter loves Bob books.

I bought this whole set to help my kindergartener with his reading. He already does a great job reading so this is just reinforcement. The size of the books are perfect for little hands. Definitely recommend for new readers or early readers

Our kindergartner has read through the entire bob books series. He has mastered reading with confidence in a slow but steady way. The books build upon each other both in complexity and length and ease little ones into the world of reading. We have tried a ton of early reader books and have found the most success with bob books and Rhonda’s readers. We started with bob books and then in set three used both bob books and the Rhonda readers. Our son prefers the Rhonda readers at this level but they would have been a bit too hard to start with. I do think the Rhonda readers are a little easier than the last two boxes of Bob books so they complement each other well.

I really didn't expect my daughter to cruise through the Bob Books as fast as she did. She's only 4 years old and didn't really "get" reading until we got her the first set. Within 3 months, she'd breezed right through sets 1, 2, and 3, and she's now reading this one-- "Complex Words," with ease. I'm absolutely mindblown by how fast and easy reading has been for her thanks to these books. We'd tried some practice-reading at home ("Hop on Pop" and so on) but something about the Bob books just got through to her and I'm amazed to see her easily reading the complicated words in this book. In three months, she's gone from only knowing how to write her name and 2 other words to suddenly writing little story-books by herself-- at FOUR! I'm so proud and amazed and I think Bob Books are 99% of the reason for these sudden leaps in literacy! My daughter is bright and may be gifted, but she's not a prodigy by any means. I think this early, advanced reading is well within the reach of most children. I strongly encourage parents of preschoolers to buy these books, and they're likely useful for kindergarten and 1st grade students, too, especially those who might need extra help outside the classroom.

We have really enjoyed this series. My son, who just completed kindergarten, has used the series over the course of the year. The cartoons are funny, the text builds from set to set in a logical way. The box design gives kids a great feeling of accomplishment and let's them set goals -- we set up a card with stickers. My son gets one each time he reads a book in the set and when he's done with a box, he gets to go the bookstore to choose a book. The books build his confidence as a new reader and develop new skills in a more gradual and coherent way than other series I've seen, which claim they are for new readers but don't have a logical progression in the language they use. These books do.

I taught my daughter to read last summer using the Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons book. By using that book, she's quite far ahead a lot of "beginning readers" books. However, I have been finding any character level 1 books (i.e. Fancy Nancy, Pinkalicious, anything you can buy at Target basically) to be all over the road in terms of difficulty and they do not follow ANY phonetic pattern at all. Words like "through" and "castle" will be in there instead of similar words with the same sounds like "frogs, dogs, bog" etc. BOB books follow phonetic building, meaning all the books have similar sounds that kids can master and then build on (one book with all short a sounds, all short i sounds, etc.). You will not find random words that are way too hard and jarring for a five year old to figure out suddenly. We got the set 4, complex words. We had been given a few books from set 1 from a friend and those were a little too easy. I so wish we had a few sets of these books immediately following using the 100 lessons book because that would have saved me a lot of headache in finding books she could actually read. I was using "Level 1" readers from local stores that were too hard/inconsistent or this set of Scholastic books in level A and all the pictures gave the words away. I like that these are short, the photos are fun but do not completely give the words away so they still have to read them. My daughter reads these without any tears. It's a joy for her!