Submit Ideas
You – our wonderful Bob Books parents, grandparents, teachers, friends and children – have many ideas of terrific ways to use the Bob Books. Thank you for sharing them with the Bob Books community.
New ideas are always welcome. Click the button in the top corner to send an email. Photos, YouTube clips and audio are all invited.
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How to organize your books
We love our Bob Books. The box they come in is handy, but once we had all seven sets it was too hard to keep them organized. My low-tech solution was to put them in a plastic shoe box. The size is 7-1/4” x 12-3/4” x 4” deep. As you can see, it fits perfectly. I used the cardboard packing that comes in the Bob Books boxes to make the dividers (if you haven’t thrown it away already.)
Sometimes my kids get really involved in organizing the box and getting everything in its right order. I figure I’ve done pretty well if I can get them into their correct section. The covers have a color-coded circle on the front that helps a lot.
• Lynn K, Seattle
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When your child completes a book
Even as an adult there is a sense of accomplishment upon finishing a book. For a child, that feeling is magnified wonderfully. And for a beginning reader, there is ecstatic glee for having managed to make it from the front cover to the back: “I read it! I read a book!” As a father of two 6-year-old extremely identical twins, I’ve enjoyed using Bob Books to teach them – one at a time – how to read.
To enhance their sense of accomplishment, whenever one child manages to read a Bob book perfectly (or close enough) I write their name and the date on the inside cover: Clara read this book perfectly on … When they read the book a second time, their name goes in again, with a star. In this way we are working our way through all five boxes of Bob Books, first one daughter signing in, and then the other. Of course, for me, the books become more valuable with each name and data I’m able to inscribe. This works so well that my older daughter, who is 8, has me do the same with all of her books. She has a special shelf in her room for the books she’s completed, and although she could easily write in her own name and date she insists that Dad do this for her. A nice way to create milestones.
• Grant F, Seattle, Washington
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Reading Reward Chart
I just wanted to let you know that I have been using the Bob Books to teach my children to read for many years. So far, 12 of the 15 are readers now. We have successfully launched (graduated) 6 of our 15 children – and they all grew up with the Bob books. Bob Books were and are the highlight of their Kindergarten year!
I was wondering if you could add a small section on your website? It would be wonderful to see a chart that the children could print off that listed all of the Bob Books- they could color or mark each one off as the read them!
Mom of Many Blessings, Jane S
To print the Reading Chart, right-click on it and open in its own window. It fits an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.
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Picture rewards
My wife has cut out construction paper and covered each picture in the books. Then the reward for reading a page is getting to see the picture. My son Carson loves it!
Tony
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Writing practice
At our preschool, there is a writing exercise before progressing to the next book. The instructor writes some sentences from the book, but leaves a blank for one word in each sentence. The child then writes in the missing word. If the child’s handwriting isn’t well developed, she might be given word choices in order to circle the correct choice, and then proceed to write the word in the blank using the circled word as a guide. This exercise is devised on-the-fly using each child’s “writing book” (a set of blank writing templates used for a variety of exercises).
See a sample of the exercise completed after my daughter read the book Jig and Mag from Set 1.
Aj at Thingamababy
