1st Grade Reading List Part 1 & Book Reports

I tried to stay away and I couldn't.  So, I'll talk about reading & book lists.

So what books am I going to use to (hopefully) teach Optimus Prime and Bumblebee to read?

I picked "Step Into Reading Step 1" books because of all the series out there their's looked the easiest.  We already had a few books, we ordered a few more, and I wrote up a schedule:

• Thomas & Friends: Thomas Goes Fishing
• Team Umizoomi: Dog Days
• Sesame Street: B is for Books
• The Berenstain Bears: Big Bear Small Bear
• Thomas & Friends: The Close Shave
• Tangled: A Kingdom of Color
• DC Super Friends: Flying High
• Thomas & Friends: Thomas and the Jet Engine
• Dragon Egg

The last two on the list are back up books in case we need them.

We also have some more books if we get through those (from all different series):

• Sesame Street: Up, Up, Up!
• Peculiar Pets
• Big Beasts
• Nature's Amazing Partners
• The Lion King: Roar!
• The Little Mermaid: Ariel's Treasure Hunt
• Cinderella: Run, Gus, Run!
• Winnie the Pooh: Pooh's Scavenger Hunt
• Finding Nemo: Best Dad in the Sea
• Beauty and the Beast: Chip's Favorite Season
• Pocahontas: Where's Flit?
• 102 Dalmatians: Where's Oddball?
• Dinosaur: Two of a Kind

My current plan is to spend six days working on a book, however I'm willing to change my plan.  My biggest concern is that they will just memorize the book so I only want to do a couple of pages a day.  I tried to line up the books with their spelling units.  For example, when we are doing "Tangled: A Kingdom of Color" we are also covering colors in our spelling unit.  This way the book will support the spelling unit and the spelling unit will support the book, however it didn't always wok out this way.

We also have our Reading Comprehension textbook (see our curriculum) to go along with this.  My current plan is to read three books, then do a Reading Comprehension unit.  The book has activities to go along with the story so I figure it'll give us a nice break for a few days until we dive back into trying to read.  

Next, we have our chapter book reading list which is not part of our schoolwork but just a goal we try to meet each month (although this list is for three months):

• Spiderwick: The Ironwood Tree
• Spiderwick: The Wrath of Mulgarath
• Spiderwick: The Lost Chapters
• Hamtaro: Calling all Ham-Hams!
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Lost Lumberjack
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Glowing Alien
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Wandering Witch
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Haunted Hound
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Theater Phantom
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Doughy Creature
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Bigfoot Beast
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Wrestler's Ghost
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Leaping Lion
• Scooby-Doo and You: The Case of the Terrifying Pterodactyl

As we read these they will pop up on our Reading List page and our Book Series page.

One thing we are doing this quarter that we have never done before is Book Reports.  I'm hoping that making them do one book report a week will help them with learning how to read, will help their handwriting, and will help their reading comprehension - which is already pretty good but I want them to start asking questions on their own without prompts from me.  Their Book Report will be pretty basic, I'm only looking for a couple of things: title, author, fiction or nonfiction, number of pages, favorite character, favorite part of book, what they would rate it, and drawing a scene from the book.  They don't have to do a book report from these books, but I figure it will give them a good start to work with this.

Update 8/3/2013:  I updated this post because we started some of our Reading List books early.  Initially "Scooby-Doo's High Flying Adventure" was listed instead of "Spiderwick: The Lost Chapters," however we had already finished the Scooby book by the time this quarter rolled around.