Mighty Reader Workbook: 1st Grade Reading and Skills Practice with Favorite Bible Stories by Heidi Cooley
Stephanie's Rating: 5 out of 5 bookmarks

What a fun concept! Heidi Cooley's book, Mighty Reader Workbook: 1st Grade Reading and Skills Practice with Favorite Bible Stories, provides a quick and useful way in which to learn Bible stories and work on reading comprehension. Mrs. Cooley has chosen 13 well-known stories from the Bible and provides a reading script and activities with one story being read 6 times a week. She explains that students are often asked by their teachers to read 20 minutes at home nightly. She has developed a system that should fulfill that requirement while providing focused reading and reading development skills. This system does intend that a parent be present; this is not a system for independent reading.

The first thing I noticed is that the Bible stories are just that, stories. They are not actual excerpts from the Bible, but rather a retelling of the story broken down into 6 sentences. Each sentence contains one red vocabulary word that is explained on the first page. To keep the story interesting in the rereading, Mrs. Cooley has outlined six different ways in which to read with an adult and suggests a different style each night. For a struggling reader, this daily repetition of the same story would be a magnificent confidence booster, as one could assume that each night the reading would become more fluid through repetition. For an advanced reader, enough is changed each night in the manner in which the story is read that the story should still hold interest even after the content is mastered and fluidity has been achieved.

Heidi Cooley

Overall, I believe this would be a useful and interesting tool for 1st Grade Readers. The font and page layouts are pleasing, as are the clip art pictures scattered throughout. However, this book was also intended to provide more immersion in the Bible, and while the stories are from the Bible, the lack of actual Bible Scriptures would not aid in familiarity with the Word of God. As a learning tool, it is top-notch. As a Bible program, it is not quite so successful. If you have a First Grade, or even Second Grade reader, give this book a try! The interactive reading will be sure to please both student and parent!

Note that this book contains worksheets and is meant as a consumable; one book per child, not reusable.





Stephanie Garrett is a busy homeschooling mom of three who somehow always finds time to read. She has been a voracious reader since childhood and even won a bicycle in elementary school for having read the most books! She enjoys learning and growing and never turns down an opportunity to try something new. Her first love is the Lord and service to Him, second is family, and third...is reading. She believes that anyone who learns to read with comprehension can go anywhere and do anything! She also enjoys music, theatre, sewing, and mathematics.



Disclosure: The publisher provided us with a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links.