A Little Review: Fun Tales

I have been trying, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to get Rose to read me one short book each day. We are still working through The Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading, and lately we have had more successful days with it than non-successful days, so I guess that is saying something! You can click here to see how we are making the program more fun for her- though lately she has been okay with skipping the doll friends and stickers.  Reading doesn't come as easily to her as it did to my older three, who were able to finish OPGTR shortly after beginning first grade.  But we are progressing forward, no matter how slowly,  so I am not too worried. She is only six after all!

So, on to Fun Tales. These little books are Sonlight's version of  BOB Books, which we also own and use.  Lately though, I find myself picking up our Fun Tales more often than our BOB books.  I think part of it is that the Fun Tales are just one set in one tidy box, while we have multiple sets of BOB books that tend to get all mixed up.

 There are 27 beginning readers in Fun Tales and they come in a sturdy cardboard box that closes with a Velcro tab on the back (a little touch that I like very much!).

The books progress slowly in difficulty. I think they progress more slowly than the BOB books do, which is another reason I grab them more often than those. In OPGTR we are just starting to do beginning consonant blends...words like "glass" and "blob", and I find that all of the Fun Tales books are at just the right level for that.

The books come in all different bright colors, as you can see...

 

Inside, there are simple drawings to go along with the beginning reader text. The text starts out super simple with Book 1...

And then it ramps ups slowly as you go along. Rose gets a kick out of the silly storyline and the funny pictures. Sometimes, the pictures cause her to guess what the words say without reading, but more often, she can't guess the words just from the picture. 

 

My favorite part of Fun Tales is the little paragraph on the back of each book that features the animal from the story. It makes reading the book feel more "shared". She reads the inside, and then I read her the back cover.

These books are very comparable to the beginning BOB readers sets. The only real difference is that Fun Tales  include the animal facts on the back of each book. And obviously, that BOB books go through higher levels of phonics, introducing things like compound words and long vowel sounds. We are going to use Fun Tales first and follow them up with the BOB books.