Reading Chest Review

Research shows that reading with children for just ten minutes per day can make a dramatic difference in how they perform at school. But, finding enough interesting reading material at the right level for your child can be difficult, with few schools changing books daily and few libraries providing a solid selection of reading scheme books.

However, now you can encourage children to develop their love of reading with Reading Chest, an innovative book rental service for primary-aged children learning to read.

Reading Chest offered three months of free access to the Bronze Level Membership as part of our review on Reading Chest, and here are our findings:

Reading Chest’s Website:

http://www.readingchest.co.uk

Reading Chest Facebook –

https://www.facebook.com/ReadingChest

What is Reading Chest?

Reading Chest, founded by Liz Walker, a former primary school teacher and mother of three, is the UK’s only through-the-post book rental service for reading scheme books aimed at children aged 4 – 9. For a monthly membership fee, children receive regular deliveries of books from Reading Chest’s extensive selection of reading schemes, including Oxford Reading Tree, Project X, Rigby Star and Collins Big Cat. These include both fiction and non-fiction titles.

There is a great selection of reading schemes for children and each delivery comes complete with a pre-paid return envelope, making it easy for even the busiest of parents to provide their children with some great choices for their daily dose of reading.

Who does Reading Chest cater for?

Children aged 4 – 9 years old

How much does membership cost?

Monthly membership starts from £9.95 and all new members receive a book bag, a bookmark, a reward chart and stickers. Certificates are available to download from the Reading Chest website and budding literary critics can even see their own book Reading Chest reviews published online! Check to see if you can find a Reading Chest discount code or Reading Chest vouchers online before you subscribe.

Reviewers:

Aron (3 years old)

Review:

I was very excited to receive an offer to review Reading Chest’s service as Aron is a very keen reader, and even though he’s only 3 years old and this service caters for children from 4 years plus, Aron has in fact begun to read. He learned phonics when he was just shy of 3 and can read a lot of the two to four-letter words in the English language. So, I am very keen to build on his reading skills.

To get started, I visited Reading Chest’s website, www.readingchest.co.uk, to sign up. Here is a screenshot of their home page:

Step 1 – Prices & Packages:

When you click on ‘Sign up’, you are taken to a page that shows you the membership offers available – ‘Step 1: Prices & Packages’:

The packages available are:

I was offered 3 months free for the Bronze Package, so I signed up to the Bronze Package.

Step 2 – Choose a Book Band:

You are then taken to a page where you can choose Reading Chest Book Bands.

As Aron is at the very beginning of his reading journey, I picked ‘Stage 1’, which is the ‘Pink book band’ and then clicked on, ‘Go to the next step!’.

The recommended reading age is 4 – 5 years old. If you are unsure of which band to pick, the page below offers you the chance to look through the sample pages to see if the selected book band is right for your child.

Step 3 – Reading Scheme Selection:

You are given further options to tailor the package to meet your child’s interests.

01 – You can select whether you would prefer to read fiction, non-fiction or both. I selected ‘Both’.

02 – You can tell Reading Chest the reading schemes you would like. All the schemes are selected by default, but you can exclude particular schemes by unchecking the boxes. I just left it on, ‘all schemes selected’.

03 – Your choices above will determine how many books you will be given. The selection I picked will give me 137 books. Sounds like more than enough to me!

Step 4 – Your Details:

Here you’ll get the chance to input all of your details..

Step 5 – Correspondence Details:

You are then asked to fill out your address details, your child’s name (as it will appear on the envelope) and whether you’d like to receive an occasional email newsletter from readingchest.co.uk.

Step 6 – Payment Details:

You get the chance to review your choices here and confirm your selections are correct. You will be asked to enter your credit card details.

Step 7 – You’re done!

Our first delivery should be with us within 2 -3 working days. So, now we wait!

Step 8: We receive our package!

We were very excited when a package came through the post and Aron anxiously ripped open the white envelope (above) to go through all the items in his red book bag.

So, what did we get?

1. One super cute red book bag for Aron to carry his books in;
2. One A4 pre-paid envelope;
3. One bookmark;
4. One set of stickers;
5. One reward chart;
6. Leaflet on Reading Chest, welcoming you to the service; and
7. 4 x books in the pink band. These are:
   1. Tiger’s Family
   2. My Cushion!
   3. Who is it?
   4. Got It!

I placed all of the items in the red book bag provided for Aron, so that he could pick out his lucky first book to read. He brought out the book, ‘Who is it?’

Who is it? – Series created by Roderick Hunt and Alex Brychta – Oxford Reading Tree Scheme

‘Who is it?’ is a very thin book, 8 pages in length, but at this early stage of reading, I can imagine a four-year-olds’ concentration span lasts about five minutes when they’re reading. So, I knew the length of the book wouldn’t bother Aron. At the back of the book, a label was added to let you know what book you are reading, the book band, the scheme and the book’s stock code.

Inside the front cover, there is an address label for ‘Reading Chest’ to remind you this book belongs to Reading Chest and it is not a keepsake. The inside cover very helpfully tells you what to do with your child before reading the book, during reading, and a little bit about the words in the book. More specifically, it talks about how to read the book to your child, ensuring they gain maximum benefit from reading through the scheme, i.e. talk about the words you see and help your child sound out some of the words in the book.

Each of the pages in the book only contains one to three words, with large illustrations above each sentence. This helped Aron grasp what the words meant in relation to the pictures and what the book was about as a whole. ‘Who is it?’ is set at a family and friends gathering, under a lit marquee, and friends and family make shadows using the light and themselves, so the others have to guess what they are. Everyone has a go, including dad, who dresses up as a spaceman.

There is an ‘After Reading’ instruction from Reading Chest to prompt me to ask Aron about what he thought of the shadow game and how dad made himself into a spaceman using household items, such as a colander and some bedding.

We dived into a deep conversation about shadows and throughout the day Aron pointed out his shadows to me whenever he noticed them. He even learned some words in the process!

Tiger’s Family – by Shoo Rayner and illustrated by Jon Stuart – Project X Scheme

Tiger’s Family is another short book, containing twelve pages in total, and the concept is pretty much the same as ‘Who is it?’ The book, helpfully, tells me what I should be doing with Aron before, during and after reading the book and warns me of some tricky words Aron might find during this reading.

Tiger’s Family is about a boy called Tiger and a typical day with his family, who are all aptly named at the beginning of the book. Mum has made some cakes, which all get hurled to the floor as Tiger and his brother runs through the kitchen door. The book very cleverly talks about the varying emotions each member of the family are faced with, i.e. ‘Mum is sad,’ ‘Dad is mad’, and I am instructed to talk with Aron about why mum was sad and whether Aron liked the book. I believe this is to get him to talk about his own emotions and teach him to express himself through words.

Again, each page only has one – four words, to not overwhelm the child during reading, and a lot of the words are repeated to help imprint that word onto the child’s brain.

I was very impressed that Aron already knew how to read the word, ‘Tiger’, but I had to help him with the tricky words that were forewarned in the front of the book. Aron enjoyed sounding out ‘sad’ and ‘mad’ and even acted a little angry when the cakes fell onto the floor.

Got it! – By Charlotte Guillain and Ley Honor Roberts – C. Collins Big Cat Phonics Scheme

Got it! Has 15 pages in total and uses three to six words in a sentence. There are no instructions at the front of the book, but a more detailed instruction sheet at the back entitled, ‘Ideas for reading’, which goes into more detail about how to read to the child and what to discuss with them during and after reading.

Got it! Is about a father and daughter at the beach, trying to catch a crab using a net and tipping the crab into a pot. The daughter then tips the crab back into the pond it came from, with an illustrative final two pages showing the process of how she caught the crab.

I was instructed to read the title and blurb with Aron, focusing on blending the individual words together. I also discussed rock pooling and what we need it for. I asked Aron what he could see in the pictures and he intelligently pointed out the beach, the net, the pot and the crab. He even explained what the daughter was doing, ‘She is catching that crab in the net’.

I wasn’t able to challenge Aron to suggest other words that ended in ck, for example, or to draw a picture of equipment needed for rock pooling, as he isn’t at that stage yet. But, if I keep on with this reading activity at least once every day, it won’t take long for him to widen his vocabulary enough to complete these stages at a later date.

My Cushion! By Alison Hawes and Tania Hurt-Newton – Rigby Star Scheme

My Cushion! Has eight pages in total and uses very simple wording, mainly repeating, ‘My Cushion!’ in various contexts. It contains only two keywords, ‘my’ and ‘no’, which I felt was just enough to help Aron understand and memorise the words properly before moving on.

The book is all about a brother and sister fighting over a cushion, which finally breaks, and mum comes in and exclaims, ‘Oh no! My cushion!’

My Cushion! Was Aron’s favourite book. He wanted to read it about five times before putting it down. I think he related to fighting over something with his brother.

I was instructed to ask Aron why mum was upset at the end of the story and how the children felt during the book. Aron said it was everyone’s cushion, which was actually right, so I couldn’t argue with him on that point. Although, I did mention that too much fighting over something could lead that object to break and then no one could play with it afterwards.

Towards the end of the day, I noticed Aron offer his trains to his brother. Perhaps, the book had left a mark on him to not fight over his toys with his brother? Well, perhaps, just for now…

Sticker chart

I emphasised to Aron that because he had read all four books so beautifully, he was allowed to place four stickers on his reward chart to progress his journey through the reading map. I asked him about which colour stickers we should add to the reward chart when he had successfully completed four pink band books. He answered correctly, ‘pink’, but decided it was more fun to take out all of the stickers and add them to the fridge.

I helped him pick out four pink stickers instead and he took great pride in adding them to his reading map.

After sampling Reading Chest’s first book session, I felt very proud of my son that he had read four books so well, and, most importantly, I felt like Aron had progressed in his reading. I decided to hold onto the books for a couple more days so I could get Aron to read them again before placing three of them back in the pre-paid envelope and sending them back to Reading Chest to swap for three more books.

I really enjoyed the whole service. I felt like I had learned how to be a teacher and not just a parent, and I want to carry this on every day with both of my boys. I believe Reading Chest will make up a valuable part of both of my sons’ reading education and help them expand on their already growing love for books as well as their reading levels, even up to Oxford Reading Tree Level 7 books or Oxford Owl Readers before they get to that stage at school!

The great thing is you can help them to read by yourself and you don’t need to be a teacher to do that. I may even get some alone time if I could leave the kids to read by themselves. One can dream…

What did I like most about Reading Chest’s service?

I liked how simple it was to set up the service and how much I learned about teaching my son to read.

Other books that are great are:

• Barney 1 2 3 4 5 Senses
• Barney I Love Bugs
• Sail Back Dinosaur Bug

What to watch out for:

One book came with a huge fold down the front. Make sure you make a point of this in the sections provided at the back of the pre-paid envelope so you are not charged for the damage. The back of the pre-paid envelope offers you three options when returning the books, i.e.

‘Received the wrong book(s)’

‘Book(s) damaged – sorry!’

‘Book(s) received already damaged’ – This is where I pointed out that the front of ‘My Cushion!’ had a fold down the middle.

Other points to note:

As these books are not yours and they will need to be returned at some point, you have to make an extra effort to not let any little people get their hands all over it. I felt very bad for Aidan, who is only two, because every time he wanted to handle the book, I had to snatch it back off him and take control over his interest.

Rating:

5 out of 5

Reading Chest is a fantastic service and it will not just help Aron to progress with his reading, but also build on our strong mother/son relationship. I just wished Aidan was old enough to join us too.