Yes, there are that many books

Morgan - It sounds more than it probably is (honest, no, really!)

I have bought little bear two collections of the Oxford Reading Tree scheme, conveniently bundled together by the Book People, one with 13 books and one with 36, plus another six from ebay (which is my friend). This was achieved very economically, and through Quidco, so I got cashback.

They are at the equivalent stage as the ones that they use at school, as far as I can tell, and use roughly the same system, but are not the same. I am hoping that I will be helping little bear to enjoy reading and encouraging him, using the same or very similar techniques to school but without duplicating their work. They are all about fourteen pages long, with about two dozen words or less per page.

One reason that he is getting such a vast quantity is the very good deal, and that a friend gave us £25 to spend on little bear for Christmas and his birthday, she is a book lover herself and I owe her one penny change.

The other big, big reason is that little bear is loving reading. He threw a huge hissy fit because he wanted to read books without difficult words, and he wanted to read them NOW! I was very calm as I told him that we hadn't got any, so he couldn't and he should go to sleep. ('I can't go to sleep because I want to read!' 'That's okay, just lie awake and think nice thoughts.' - little bear tries it on a lot.) He insists on at least two stories every night, prefers to read them to us, and will do so every time he brings home the three reading books (instead of one) from school.

I also bought him a half dozen books for handwriting practice - you trace over the words, then copy them, and then wipe them off. This isn't actually included in the total as I gave them to little bear before Christmas, just at the start of the Christmas holiday. He has had huge amounts of fun with it, and I have had wonderful peace and quiet for nearly an hour at a time.

(the other books are Beast Quest, very economical deal and designed for young boys to encourage them to read, but they can be stashed for a year or two and some Ben 10 picture books, so he can brag about them in the playground. Darn, I've just remembered the Dr Who annual I've got for him, I'll wrap that later for his birthday...)