Grow Kindergartener Reading Skills With These Selections

Build on Reading Success with Five Year Olds

Looking to build burgeoning reading skills in your five year old? Whether your child has started kindergarten, you want to give them the extra nudge to succeed once they get there, or they could use some practice during school breaks, these books can help. Made with easy words they may already recognize, and fun stories, books from this list will delight young readers. They also help build literacy skills that will last a lifetime. From easiest to hardest, you’ll find a selection of picture books and beginning readers suitable for kids who have started to master basic words and sentences.

Brown Bear: It doesn’t get any easier than this book for a first time reader. With repetitive question and answer responses, kids will build confidence with every reading from this sweet story. Kids can also flip the page to reveal the next animal and color, giving them helpful hints to sound out basic words throughout the book.

Train Books: Each of these four readers has a limited word count and simple sentences for excellent reading practice. Let kids choose which one they’d like to read out loud, as they explore with these trains from the city, country, and even the circus. 

Dr. Seuss: Once kids get ready for more words per page, Dr. Seuss offers a lot of options. From Red Fish, Blue Fish to more complex reads like Green Eggs and Ham, these books have more pages with rhyming texts enjoyed by kids for generations.

How Many Animals Fit on My Tractor?: Another fun read for kids, this book takes a tour of the farm. It includes lots of animal vocabulary to expand their sight recognition and ability to sound out words. And the fun pictures will keep them entertained while they practice.

Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus: The pigeon takes a stand in this classic tale from Mo Willems. With minimal text and maximum fun, kids can start reading on their own. Choose from the first book or any of the others in the same series.

If You Give a Pig a Pancake: Once kids become ready, see what happens when you feed a pig breakfast. Simple sentence structure and repetitive formats help kids recognize punctuation and bigger words with more compound sounds, like breakfast and pancake.

Henry and Mudge: These simple readers offer young readers more stories. Choose any one of the selections about this oversized pet and his beloved human. With large print text and multiple stories in each edition, kids can read as much or as little as they’d like per practice session.