Reddit reviews Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed Big Book (A Five Little Monkeys Story)

Love love love reading to my two daughters - 1 and 3. My grandmother was an elementary school teacher, so we grew up always being read to and were quick to learn to read ourselves - and now am definitely passing that along to my kids. Each of them get three books before bed at the very least, and are always bringing books over for us to read to them. I love it when they're at the stage where they're just really learning to talk, and babble their way through pretending to read a book. :-)

Some of our favorite books lately have been:

• So Big!
  
• Bear Stays Up for Christmas
  
• Zen Shorts
  
• How Do Dinosaurs Count to Ten?
  
• What Makes a Rainbow?
  
• Is Your Mama a Llama?
  
• The Very Quiet Cricket
  
• Five Little Monkeys
  
• Are You My Mother?
  
• Goodnight Moon
  
• I Love You Stinky Face
  
• (Any number of Clifford books)
  
• (lots of Dr. Seuss books)
  
  I still have my collection of books from when I was young - I am looking forward to introducing them to Beverly Cleary and Roald Dahl as they get older.

My son knew all his letters at age 2 as well. At 3 he was reading out street and shop signs, and now at 4 he can read simple books by himself. All we did was read books with him from a young age. He watches about an hour of TV/videos every day, stuff like Pingu or Dora or Thomas or kids' songs on youtube - none of which can be credited with teaching him to read, I think it was just reading with him.

Some of his favorite books (in chronological order):

• Classics like Goodnight Moon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar
  
  
• I See A Monster
  
  
• Funny Face - highly recommended, gave my two-yr-old a simple way to recognize and express his emotions
  
  
• Five Little Monkeys Jump on the Bed and other similar sing-along and/or play-along books, which greatly helped him begin to sight-read words.
  
  
• Catch Me, Catch Me, the first book he learned to read by himself. Simple rhyming text combined with his favorite theme, trains.
  
  
• That Rabbit Belongs to Emily Brown - his latest favorite: great story, great mix of repeating words and new/challenging words without ever going completely over his head.
  
  
  
  I'm a stay-at-home mom so we probably have more time to read with kids than families where both parents work. But even so maybe you can still try: we only read about one book a day on average, so making it a bedtime routine would put two-working-parent kids on the same footing as ours.