The early elementary grades usher in a phenomenal milestone for the 6 to 8 year old homeschool child: learning how to read! Beginning readers want to graduate from board books, wordless books, and predictable books to books with more text than pictures. I call these “transition picture books.” These are the books with a text to picture ratio of about 3 to 1. A good example would be the book, Harry Kitten and Tucker Mouse, written by George Selden which is actually a chapter book with large font text and an illustration every other page. The Classic Tales of Brer Rabbit illustrated by Don Daily is another good example of the transition picture-chapter book. Deepening plot lines with more characters and a variety of descriptive settings characterize the best classic childrens’ books for beginning readers. Transition picture-chapter books usually run between 60 and 100 pages. In addition to reading these transition picture books aloud, find some “easy-t0-read” stories (usually called level 1) with sight words as well as simple phonics readers for your child to tackle out loud on her own.
