Before reading begins, a child must first understand and master key pre-reading skills. Skills like learning the alphabet, shape recognition, matching, sorting, learning patterns and sequencing.
Wilson, age 3, our reader-in-training, is doing pretty well with alphabet recognition (give or take 3 or 4… or 8 letters, depending on when I ask him) so I thought I’d spend some time this week focusing on specific pre-reading skills. The My First Bob Books sets are wonderful in that they build upon simple concepts (i.e. shape identification) and then progress to more advanced skills (such as matching and sorting and sequencing.) The sizing and color-coding of the books is really helpful too, especially when you’re dealing with a short attention span and a child who likes to dump all of his books out on the floor.
We started with the red color-coded books, the first books in the My First Bob Books: Pre Reading Skills set that focus on shape recognition and matching. We breezed through those; I could tell that Wilson really understands his shapes. But then he grabbed one of the yellow books, the “Guessing Machine,” which helps kids understand the concept of sequencing. It’s book number 11 out of 12 in the set so I knew that by following Bob Books’ numbered progression, this would be a relatively advanced concept. And it was. Sequencing – the ability to predict or guess what happens next in a story – was a completely foreign concept for him. So now I know what he doesn’t know. This was a really important realization for me as a parent. And, truth be told, I’m not sure I really understood what the term sequencing meant exactly –and why it was important — until I started going through the My First Bob Books with Wilson. Now I get it. I can talk about sequencing concepts in our every day conversations (“What happens next?” You put on your shoes and then we’ll walk to the park…”) to help him grasp the step-by-step pre -reading and literacy skills that build a good foundation for reading. 
Do you have any pre-reading skill development tips you’d like to share? Let us know.
As a mother to 4 and ½ year-old twins and a 22-month-old toddler, I was excited when the twins began recognizing letters of the alphabet and asking me to tell them what the words were on signs, books, or on anything for that matter. I took note and realized that they were indeed ready to read. 
Best of all, my toddler sees her big sisters reading the Bob Books so she gets the books and pretends to read them as well. She says, “Mat sat, Sam sat,” over and over again as she turns the pages. She is not ready to learn to read yet, but I am glad that she already has a love for the books. 