Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
The Bear Can Read was founded to make learning to read at home easier for children and their families. We do this by assembling the best phonics material – books at the right level, focussed worksheets and expert advice, all delivered with a fine balance of purpose and fun.
As per National Curriculum expectations, children move up a book band regularly and automatically (we’ll nudge you when a move is coming). All the books and activities are yours to keep so you can always spend a more time on a level and even re-visit it for a great confidence boost. Our guide about what does too easy, too hard and just right look like is helpful if you are unsure of your child’s reading level.
When your child is learning each set of sounds it is really important they have access to books that closely match their phonics knowledge. There is a big difference between phonics books and popular storybooks. Sharing stories is an important part of developing a love of reading, however, when children are learning to read they need access to books that match their phonics knowledge. Your child’s teacher might ask your child to read words that have sound buttons, or to write sound buttons under a word. So how does it work?
Our aim is to make reading levels and targets totally transparent, so parents always know how their child is doing. We want to take the pressure off teachers by giving families access to the very latest and most stimulating phonics materials – at just the right reading level – at home.
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For our youngest club members aged 2-3 (Cub) and 3-4 (Teddy) we focus on the skills they need to be developing at home to keep pace with early learning goals. Tailored progress I think it’s really important to pursue something that you’re passionate about and know there is a problem that needs fixing. When it comes to building the solution and having confidence in what The Bear Can Read does, I know how important it is to get phonics books that help children learn to read in the same way they are taught in school into the hands of young children. I know how critical it is to get the level of the book right so the child doesn’t feel frustrated or bored, and I know what an incredible impact getting this right can have on a child’s attainment across all subjects (and their happiness levels). I’m so passionate about making it easier for parents to support their child’s reading at home (as a mum of three myself I love our message of ‘open the box and you’re on your way, together we create readers’) and this mission has been my compass for the last 15 months. Have you ever had a mentor or career coach? Each delivery focuses on the group of letters and sounds your child needs to learn, with games and activity sheets to assist them, and advice for parents on how to be helpful. Each box also boosts critical words like ‘the’, ‘do’ and ‘go’ – the words that children can’t sound out using phonics. Month by month, your child builds confidence.
My 6 year old can sometimes be harder to encourage, but the length and complexity of the worksheets are perfect for her attention span and once she completes one she is keen to work on more.Independent readers are independent thinkers, and once your child has mastered the skills of reading, they will be able to access ideas, stories and information from right across time and all around the world. They’ll be able to read and understand information in every area of the curriculum and learn about any subject that interests them. Independent readers find far fewer barriers to future success, whatever direction they take in life. In the word ‘night’, the long ‘i’ sound is spelled with three letters, ‘igh’. So, we put a dash under all three letters, to show they are a trigraph – three letters that make one sound. That’s because each letter in ‘pumpkin’ makes a sound on its own – there are seven letters and seven sounds in the word. There are no digraphs, so no dashes!
When I originally wrote my review for The Bear Can Read there were boxes for 2/3 year old, 3/4 year old’s, reception, year 1 & year 2. Now they’ve added an independent reader’s box as well. I originally brought the 3-4 year old’s box for Smallest Child (3 & 3 months) but I was also gifted a 2-3 year old’s box to compare the two. Now Smallest Child has started school we’ve set up our own subscription at the 4-5 years level. What’s in the cubs box? (2-3 years) These are called ‘sound buttons’, and they help your child to split up a word into its separate sounds, and then blend all those sounds together to read the word. I have spent my whole career in publishing, but the last 10 years I worked as a children’s educational publisher. After writing my MA thesis on early literacy, and researching the importance of establishing reading habits from a young age and what a huge difference it makes if parents are involved to support reading at home, I knew I wanted to build my career in children’s publishing. The Bear Can Read, a subscription service delivering bespoke early literacy and phonics bundles to children aged 2-7 so that parents can support them at home, was an idea that bubbled away a couple of years until I finally took the leap. Did you ever sit down and plan your career? For me, I think the curation of these collections is fantastic, with a good mix of fiction and non fiction, and for younger ones providing themes and concepts that support their development outside of Reading and Phonics. There’s an arch between ‘o’ and ‘e’! This is because o-e is a digraph – but the letters are split up, so we can’t just put a dash under them as usual. The arch over the top shows that o-e is a split vowel digraph – together, ‘o’ and ‘e’ make the sound ‘oa’. But the letter ‘m’ comes in between them to split them up! You know about digraphs – now meet trigraphs!As parents, we know how hard it can be to learn to read. So we set out to create simple, targeted worksheets and activities with phonics experts. We also ensure that the books are not only the newest and most engaging on the market but they specifically focus on the letters and sounds that the child is learning that month. The Bear Can Read brings fun and focus to children’s reading – 10 to 15 minutes every day makes all the difference. We are big readers in this house, and we always have been. Smallest Child is currently too small to read but she loves having stories read to her. The Bear Can Read is a reading subscription box for children aged 2 upwards. Each box is tailored to the reading stage of the child. It includes books and additional resources to help your child in their reading journey.
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