bob books beginning readers set 1 & 2 Level
Our family is using bob books photo books to help our daughter learn to read. After finishing Set 1, I thought I’d like to flip through our children’s book library to find some other books that she would be able to tackle next. I found that even the books I thought of as simple still used many phonics rules that our daughter had not been exposed to yet.
which bob books to start with ?
We ended up confidently buying bob books set 2 advancing beginners with the plans to also buy bob books complete set to get her exposed to the different phonics rules in the systematic way that she is currently enjoying.
In an effort to find books at our daughter’s level and to scratch my spreadsheet creating itch, I ended up making a huge spreadsheet of our kid’s book library including reading levels using Fountas and Pinnell and Lexile scores.
The spreadsheet ended up not being very useful because
- the two scores often contradicted each other and
- most of the books with lower scores weren’t decodable.
So I was disappointed. Until I saw that Lexile is providing more information for early readers (books <650L). Now I could add more data to my spreadsheet! More spreadsheeting!
When I added the extra information to my spreadsheet I was able to see that my daughter had only been reading books with a decoding score of 1. I was also able to see that even easy books like Hop on Pop by Dr. Seuss had a decoding score of 2. An easy favourite Mo Willems book scored a 3. I was also able to see that Green Eggs and Ham and Put Me in the Zoo both had decoding scores of 1 even though they looked longer and more complicated.
I found the Lexile levels for our books using their Look Up a Book Feature.
Here are the new reading levels for Bob Books Set 1-5 with the extra Lexile information.
(I got the Fountas & Pinnell scores from the chart on the Bob Books website.)
teaching reading with bob books
Title | Fountas & Pinnell | Lexile | Structure | Syntactic | Semantic | Decoding |
Bob 1:01 Mat | A | -90 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 1:02 Sam | A | -40 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 1:03 Dot | B | 40 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 1:04 Mac | B | 20 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 1:05 Dot and Mit | B | 0 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 1:06 Dot and the Dog | C | 40 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 1:07 Jig and Mag | C | -10 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
Bob 1:08 Muff and Ruff | C | 230 | 5 | 3 | 6 | 1 |
Bob 1:09 10 Cut-Ups | B | 110 | 5 | 1 | 6 | 1 |
Bob 1:10 Peg and Ted | B | 20 | 5 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 1:11 Lad and the Fat Cat | B | 110 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Bob 1:12 The Vet | C | 120 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 1 |
Bob 2:01 Fun in the Sun | C | 140 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 2:02 Up, Pup! | E | 30 | 6 | 1 | 6 | 1 |
Bob 2:03 Pip and Pog | D | 100 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Bob 2:04 Bow-Wow! | D | 130 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
Bob 2:05 The Big Hat | C | 40 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 2:06 Sox the Fox | D | 140 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 2:07 OK, Kids | D | 140 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Bob 2:08 Rub-a-Dub | D | 130 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Bob 2:09 Go, Bus | C | 90 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 2:10 The Red Hen | C | 120 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 2:11 The Sad Cat | C | 80 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 2:12 0 to 10 | D | 120 | 8 | 2 | 5 | 1 |
Bob 3:01 Floppy Mop | D | 160 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Bob 3:02 Lolly Pops | E | 190 | 4 | 2 | 5 | 5 |
Bob 3:03 Frogs | E | 220 | 6 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
Bob 3:04 The Red Car | E | 210 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
Bob 3:05 Summer | D | 170 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
Bob 3:06 Kittens | F | 190 | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
Bob 3:07 Funny Bunny | F | 310 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 2 |
Bob 3:08 Bed Bugs | F | 200 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 2 |
Bob 4:01 Ten Men | E | 120 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
Bob 4:02 Bump! | F | 100 | 1 | 2 | 7 | 10 |
Bob 4:03 Cat and Mouse | F | 110 | 5 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
Bob 4:04 The Swimmers | G | 280 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 1 |
Bob 4:05 Samantha | G | 270 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 5 |
Bob 4:06 Willy’s Wish | G | 320 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 3 |
Bob 4:07 Jumper and the Clown | F | 320 | 6 | 4 | 2 | 4 |
Bob 4:08 Max and the Tom Cats | G | 380 | 7 | 6 | 4 | 3 |
Bob 5:01 The Game | G | 230 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 2 |
Bob 5:02 Joe’s Toe | G | 350 | 6 | 3 | 6 | 3 |
Bob 5:03 Bud’s Nap | G | 270 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 4 |
Bob 5:04 The Picnic | H | 320 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 3 |
Bob 5:05 The Train | H | 470 | 8 | 6 | 5 | 3 |
Bob 5:06 The Visit | I | 390 | 8 | 4 | 5 | 4 |
Bob 5:07 Chickens | G | 330 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 5 |
Bob 5:08 The King | I | 410 | 7 | 6 | 6 | 2 |
You can check out bob books discount on Amazon
This new information will make it much easier for me to pre-screen books to find skill appropriate decodable books for our daughter until she’s confident enough that she starts tackling any book she wants to read.