Beginning Reader Books

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Priced for convenience and economy, the Read and Sing Complete Collection includes all eleven Read-and-Sing Books with their music CDs at a price that is lower than the cost of the individual collections or books, if purchased separately.  This collection provides a foundation in phonemic awareness that is crucial to early literacy, an excellent enhancement for Sing Your Way Through Phonics CDs and Mini-Charts!  See individual book titles below for descriptions.

Order Read and Sing Complete Collection online ($74.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Letters and Sounds Collection

Early Words Collection

Order Meet the Lit Kids book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Meet the Lit Kids

Meet the Lit Kids introduces readers to the cast of characters they will meet in the Read-and-Sing series. With names that help children remember the vowels, Amos, Eli, Ivy, Otis, Uri, and Yvette invite youngsters to join in the fun as they learn about letters, sounds, and words. Children will come to love these rascally animals as they frolic through each book and song in the Read-and-Sing series, providing a visual component to reinforce important concepts about reading and writing.

Order Alphabet Letters book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Alphabet Letters

by Myrna Gifford, illus. Frances Cooper
ISBN 0-9720763-1-X

Have you ever noticed that the letter C is shaped like an ear or that the letter S looks like a snake? This Read-and-Sing book is a different kind of alphabet book. Alphabet Letters, helps children learn to recognize capital letters by likening letter shapes to familiar objects embedded in the illustrations. As children sing along with the recording, they can trace the hidden letters, writing capital letters with their fingers. From there, it's but a small step until children know the letter shapes well enough to draw them on their own. Because teaching phonemic awareness begins with recognizing letters, additional activities for learning capital letters are suggested such as finger-drawing on partners' backs, identifying plastic letters in a bag by feeling them, and shaping capital letters with rolled clay.

Order Little Partners book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Little Partners

by Myrna Gifford, illus. Frances Cooper
ISBN 0-9720763-2-8

Some lower-case letters like c, s, and z are easy to recognize since they look like their capital letter partners - C, S, and Z. But lower-case letters like b, d, and e are harder to recognize because they look very different from capital B, D, and E. The Read-and-Sing book, Little Partners, is an alphabet book that helps children learn to recognize the lower-case letters that look different from their capital letter counterparts. Linked to a circus theme, the snappy sing-along describes each letter in terms of its component parts - sticks, holes, poles, curls, humps, and curly poles. Additional suggested activities for learning the lower case alphabet include helping children to match upper and lower case letters, assembling and disassembling lower case letters, and finding lower case letters in printed material. Together with Alphabet Letters, Little Partners provides motivational reading instruction material in alphabet recognition (capital and lower case letters) for kindergarten readiness.

Order What's That Sound book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

What's That Sound

by Myrna Gifford, illus. Frances Cooper
ISBN 0-9720763-3-6

When readers look at the letters in an unfamiliar word, they need to recall the corresponding sounds. Conversely, when writers think of sounds in a word they wish to write, they need to recall the corresponding letters. The playful shopping antics in What’s That Sound? may elicit giggles as children build letter/sound matching skills with familiar grocery items. Children can point to appropriate items (ex. bread, doughnuts, and flour for the sounds of b, d, and f) as they sing along.

Order Name Those Vowels book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Name Those Vowels

by Myrna Gifford, illus. Frances Cooper
ISBN 0-9720763-4-4

Name Those Vowels helps children learn to recognize and remember an important set of letters needed for reading and writing-the vowels. But before learning vowel rules, children must be able to instantly recognize the vowels in both capital and lower-case forms. To help them do just that, readers can point to the vowels imbedded in this book’s illustrations while singing a playful song set to the folktune, Bingo. Each time a vowel is omitted, singers can clap, rap, stomp, or add a favorite body movement.

Order Oh Do You Know book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Oh, Do You Know

by Myrna Gifford, illus. Frances Cooper
ISBN 0-9720763-5-2

Children quickly learn the short and long vowel sounds as they sing and point to the comical illustrations in Oh, Do You Know? Examples: When children sing, "Oh, do you know the short a sound?", they can point to cats, apples, ants, an ax, a hat, and a basket. For long a, they find Amos, a radio, a May calendar, a table, a cake, maple syrup, grapes, and plates. Once children become aware of the vowel sounds in words, they can draw their own short and long vowel pictures or create interesting vowel collages from magazine cut-outs.

Order Spelling Families book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Spelling Families

by Myrna Gifford, illus. Frances Cooper
ISBN 0-9720763-6-0

Spelling Families builds phonemic awareness by introducing children to short vowel rhyming word families. As each word set is added to the rhyming quilt, children sing the rule, “Change the first part but keep the ending letters.” Children are challenged to read new and familiar sets of words as the quilt grows and grows. For reinforcement, children can play matching games such as Concentration or Go Fish! with sets of rhyming words or they can design their own rhyming quilts like the one on these pages.

Order Two Little Letters book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Two Little Letters

by Myrna Gifford, illus. Frances Cooper
ISBN 0-9720763-8-7

Two Little Letters helps children learn to recognize and spell consonant digraphs: th, ch, sh, ph, kn, and gn. Song lyrics incorporate these important letter pairs in beginning, middle, and ending positions within words. As readers sing along with the lively song set to the folktune The Bluetail Fly, they can follow clues in the illustrations and point to each digraph word. Once the children have become familiar with the digraphs in this song, they can use the instrumental track to substitute their own digraph words.

Order Talking and Walking book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Talking and Walking

by Myrna Gifford, illus. Frances Cooper
ISBN 0-9720763-9-5

Talking and Walking helps children learn to recognize and spell words that follow the rule, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” The target words follow a c-v-v-c (consonant-vowel-vowel-consonant) pattern where the first vowel is long and the second is silent. Characters in a camping story act out the rule in the course of their adventure. Once the children have become familiar with the long vowel words in this song, they can use the instrumental track to substitute their own c-v-v-c words. Examples: ea-bean, ee-peek, ai-mail, oa-goat.

Order Silent E book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Silent E

by Myrna Gifford, illus. Frances Cooper
ISBN 0-9754618-0-X

Silent E helps children learn to recognize and spell words with c-v-c-e (consonant-vowel-consonant-silent e) patterns. By comparing words before and after adding a final e, children see how the sound of the middle vowel changes from short to long. By following the Lit Kids’ sign painting adventures, readers can begin to predict the complete word under the covered portion of the sign by applying the silent e rule. Once the children have become familiar with the short and long vowel words in this song, they can use the instrumental track to substitute other words that change when a silent e is added. Examples: mad/made, slid/slide, not/note, cub/cube.

Order Outlaws book and CD online ($9.95), or print an order form to mail or FAX.

Outlaws

Outlaws helps children learn to recognize and spell words that do not follow short and long vowel rules. For example, one rule states that a single vowel in the middle of a word is usually short. Exceptions-told, cold, hold. Another rule states that the first vowel in 2-vowel words is usually long. Exceptions: bread, thread, head. Comical illustrations show children how to recognize “outlaw gangs” in words by noticing the vowels and letters that follow. Once the children have become familiar with the irregular words in this song, they can use the instrumental track to substitute their own outlaw words. Examples: 3-letter patterns-there, where; 4-letter patterns-could, would; 5-letter patterns-caught, taught.

Was it too many Christmas cookies?  Was it too much eggnog?  Whatever the reason, Santa is stuck, and the situation seems hopeless.  Little did Santa know that events earlier that day would eventually lead to his rescue!  This delightfully illustrated cumulative tale of Christmas mishap is a take-off on the familiar nursery rhyme, The House That Jack Built.  With text that guarantees successful reading, even for beginners. It's easy for beginners to read along as each new page recaps all the familiar links to Santa’s dilemma.  Children love to dramatize the characters as the story winds around to its amusing conclusion.  Teachers tell us it's a real favorite for read-alouds and shared reading. Why not share the fun of this Christmas book for children with a special youngster this holiday season?