First Grade Reading List

First grade is usually a big year for gaining reading independence for kids.  If you are looking for a great selection of easy reader books or ideas about programs to help your child learn to read, please check out "A note on Beginning Readers".  This article is simply the list of books we used with her First Grade Curricula and decisions were often made based more on how the books would play with other topics she was studying or for literary concepts like character, problem and solution, cause and effect and plot concepts.  For example, "Just Lost" by Gina and Mercer Mayer was chosen as a way to go over safe decisions if she gets separated from adults in public situations and "Fancy Nancy Poison Ivy Expert" was my way of introducing her to how to watch out for this pernicious plant when we are in the woods.  Both books happen to also come from a list of books that are pretty easy to read.  Harry and the Lady Next Door is great for picking out problem and solution and all the books from Zonder Kidz related to our study of the development of the first Hebrew cities and culture as a part of ancient History.

Books Alice Read to Us:

From Zonder Kidz: I Can Read - 

Jonah and the Big Fish

Daniel and the Lions 

David and the Giant

I Can Read Books:

Bath Time for Biscuit; Alyssa Satin Capucilli
Biscuit's Day at the Farm; Alyssa Satin Capucilli
Amelia Bedelia Helps Out; Peggy Parish
Little Bear; Else Holmelund Minark
No Fighting, No Biting; Else Holmelund Minark
Owl at Home; Aarnold Lobel

Step Into Reading:

Old, New, Red, Blue; Disney

Tangled, A Horse and a Hero; Disney
Unicorn Wings; Mallory Loehr

Scholastic: 

I Spy Books

Annie and Snowball and the Dress-up Birthday; Cynthis Rylant

National Geographic Kids

Sea Turtles

Dolphins

Misc.

Go Dog Go

And I mean it Stanley
Bedtime for Francis
Danny and the Dinosaur
Various Curious George Books
The Legend of the Blue Bonnet
Who Will be My Friends
Frog and Toad are Friends
Harold's Purple Crayon
Most of the Berensstein Bears Collection
A number of Jonathan London's Froggy Books
All of the Elephant and Piggie Books and Cat the Cat by Mo Willems
Big Red Barn
Runaway Bunny
Harry and the Lady Next Door
If you Give a Cat a Cupcake
If you Give a Pig a Pancake
If you Give a Moose a Muffin
One Fish, Two Fish

Hop on Pop

Books We Read Together, Or I Read to Her:

All in Just One Cookie

The Great Kapok Tree

The Shaman's apprentice

My Backyard Garden

Garbage Helps Our Garden Grow

Soil an Early Bird Book by Sally Walker

The Tiny Seed

A Seed is Sleepy

Watch a Seed Grow

Classical Myths to Read Aloud

26 letters and 99 cents

That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown

Charlotte's Web

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Mr. Popper's Penguins

I Once was a Monkey

Stuart Little
The Sneeches
What Was I so Afraid of?
Lights for Gita
Tales of Amanda Pig
Little Oh
Thumbelina
The Sugar Child
The Gingerbread Man
The Stinky Cheese Man
The Three Little Pigs
The Three Horrid Pigs
The Three Little Javelinas
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs

Collections We Love:

The Miniature World of Peter Rabbit

The Nutshell Library 

Treasury of Fairy Tales (Naomi Lewis)
Aesop's Fables

Jim Weiss and a variety of his Audio Collections including Myths of Ancient Greece, Stories of the Bible and Shakespeare for Children.
The Starbright Foundation's Fairy Tale Classics

Enemy Pie

In light of the impending return to school in the fall for many kids, there are some out there that are worried about classmates they may encounter and others that will quickly find themselves "enemies" at school.  Even if they don't attend a mortar and brick school, kids come into contact with kids with whom they simply disagree, rub the wrong way (or are rubbed the wrong way), or who (in the worst cases) bully others.

Should your child encounter any of these "enemies" this wonderful picture book might prove a great resource to get a discussion going with your child about his or her feelings on the matter and how best to approach this "enemy" they are encountering.  I'm not saying a book can totally solve a serious bullying problem, but in most cases of dispute between a couple of kids, this book is likely to be a great help (and No, it does not offer up a recipe for simply poisoning the other kid).

The book is actually ten years old now and was featured on Reading Rainbow so there is a blog all about enemy pie, how to buy it, and resources for related lesson plans and, if you can, organizing a visit by Derek Munson to your school or home schooling cooperative so he can really send the message home about how to make an enemy a friend (Based in Vancouver Washington).  For lots of great ideas check it out!