When my oldest was a kindergartener, I wrote some super short stories to help her learn to read. I then used them to teach all my other kids to read, along with a variety of other phonics books. Variety is the spice of life, so it is good to give your emerging readers a mixture of books  with which they can learn to read.

About a year ago one of my old college roommates, Colette, who is now homeschooling, began using these stories with her boys. She liked them so much that she asked if she could publish them. Who would say no to that? So she hired an illustrator, a talented young lady who is homeschooled, and published the first of the readers:

Here are some excerpts:

Short word lists. Short stories. A combination of sight words and phonetic words.  And *really* cute illustrations.  All this makes Short Vowel Stories a great first reader for young beginners or children with short attention spans.

7/5/22 UPDATE: A new edition of this book is now available. I adapted this book for my son with Down Syndrome. The font is larger and there is double spacing between the words. There are color pictures that accompany most of the words in the word lists. Children can read the words and then find the matching pictures.

You can look inside this book and purchase Short Vowel Stories, 2nd Edition at Amazon.

But that’s not all. Colette then made a workbook.  For each story in the reader, the student traces the words from the word list. (One column per day).

There are also pages for making words with word families and for spelling dictation:

A very gentle introduction to basic grammar is included:

The workbook does a great job of combining very basic reading, handwriting, spelling, and grammar. THANK YOU, COLETTE!

I have three copies of  Short Vowel Stories  to give away. Leave a short comment stating for whom you would use the book,  for example:  your 5-year-old son, your kindergartener, your niece, nephew, grandchild, neighbor’s dog, etc. (U.S. residents only, please). In a week or two, I’ll close the draw and contact the winners by replying to their comments.

If you have an emerging reader, check out these posts on teaching your child to read:

The Three Keys to Teaching Your Child to Read – Part 1

The Three Keys to Teaching Your Child to Read – Part 2

The Three Keys to Teaching Your Child to Read – Part 3

May God bless your upcoming school year!

UPDATE: Once your child has complete Short Vowel Stories, check out the two books that follow:

Teach Me to Read Duets, Book 1

Teach Me to Read Duets, Book 2