Customer Reviews
We tried them but didn't like them - By: Andrea Anguera, 28 Apr 2008 
I have used the jolly phonics workbooks, & my son knows well most of the phonics sounds presented in them. Since we liked the workbooks we decided to try the reading books.
He stared with the red level & although he can read them (at least the first three of each of the subjects) with some help, we have found many cons for a child just starting to read: (1) The size of the words is too smalll. He would be more comfortable with a bigger size. (2) Most of the stories are dry. (3) The complexity in the sounds used per book doesn't build up graduallly. (4) The books don't focus in a few particular sounds at a time.
Given alll this, I decided to try the Songbirds series from the Oxford Reading Tree by Julia Donaldson, & it is much better. He feels a lot more confident when reading & doesn't find it -and I quote-, `boring'. He even wants to read them again & again, which is great for practice. The illustrations are very lively & we can talk a lot about them as well.
Also the teaching notes included in the Songbird series give a few good ideas to keep practising the sounds.
To summarise, I'll only use the Jolly Phonics level 1 set for children who already reading but need more practice.
Jolly Readers: Complete Set Level 1 (Jolly Readers) Red - By: Mommy, 12 Dec 2007 
I think this set is well worth it. My 5 year old daughter has started learning the key words such as 'I, the, she, he...' & the first book to this collection deals with them by using the familiar Jolly Phonics character. She is new to this & I hope she does well.
