A blog about the 5 books scheme in Kindergarten

Hi, I am Robyn and am the Kindergarten Early Years Teacher.  October’s blog is all about the 5 books scheme we use here at Great Wood Farm in our Kindergarten rooms. For this blog I have enlisted the help of two of our Kindergarten room leaders Sheryl and Fiona.

If you read just one book to your child every day, by their 5^th birthday they will have heard 1825 books! Reading is so important in any child’s life, it helps to spark creativity, curiosity, and imagination, and creating a love of reading from a young age is such an important trait in any child’s life. Having the same story read over the week will widen the children’s knowledge, although as adults we would find this boring, children thrive on repetition and like familiarity and being able to join in and know what comes next.

We believe here at Great Wood Farm that a practitioner should never leave work without reading at least one story to a child or group of children.

The 5 books scheme is something that we have been doing here for about a year now, the idea behind it is that you choose 5 books and have these in your reading corner and read them every day for at least a week. Ideally, these books will be short picture books with strong rhythm and rhyme to encourage the children to join in and memorise the stories more quickly. These may also include a traditional tale, we also ensure that we have non-fiction books around the room all the time. The children also begin to learn the structure of the book, the beginning, middle and end as well as the front cover and the blurb. We also teach the children how to handle books, learning to read from left to right.

We regularly change the 5 books and this is done with the children. Beforehand we will recap each story; the title, the plot, characters, the rhyming words and anything else that really stands out to the children. If the adult finds that the children don’t know a story well enough then it will get put back into the 5 books and we will choose 4 new books and so forth. If we find that all the children know all of the books then we will choose 5 new books together. We try and make this process fun and sometimes it will be done in a voting system and the children will place loose parts on the story they would most like to read, giving them a voice and choice over the 5 books that will be in their room. If the children really like a story we will keep it in the selection.

This video explains it further: https://www.facebook.com/TheImaginationTree/videos/this-incredibly-easy-concept-is-one-of-the-best-things-you-can-ever-do-for-your-/235909261807693/.

At Great Wood Farm this works really well, Sheryl explained that one parent reported that her child has independently adopted this system at home for her bedtime stories. Fiona said that children start to join in when reading the stories as they become more familiar and will often be able to retell the whole story using the pictures as prompts by the end of the week. Then they will take on the role of the teacher and tell the story to the other children. The stories can be enhanced using puppets and props and these can be put into the cosy corner for the children to act them out.

As parents/carers you will always be your child’s first educator and reading books is so important in a child’s life. At Nursery we have a bedtime library that our families can use to borrow a book to share at home. This is located just outside of the office on a dresser. Simply choose a book, sign it out and enjoy! Return when you are ready. We change the books over each season, so be sure to keep returning.