Choosing Readers

People often ask how to choose appropriate Sonlight Readers for young children. One way is to look over a description of the different options.

Readers K... for the student who is ready to learn the letter sounds.

Readers 1... to be used by the student who knows all the letter sounds and is ready to read 3-letter words.

Readers 2... for a child reading long vowel, 5- and 6- letter words, but needs more white space on the page, and not too much text per page.

Readers 2 Intermediate... More text per page, short chapter books, average 50-70 pages long.

Readers 2 Advanced... For students comfortable with a smaller text size, more words on a page, longer chapters. These books might average 120-150 pages.

You can use the Quick Reading Assessment on the Sonlight website, there are some notes on choosing Readers on that page as well.

What if your child seems in between these levels? I would suggest choosing the lower of the two choices. Don't worry that you are holding your child back. They will actually progress faster by reading more books at a comfortable level, rather than being constantly challenged by harder and harder books.

When your child is ready, having had the practice he needs, he will pull one off the shelf, and just start to read!