My daughter began reading at age three. When we enrolled in Kindergarten, she was tested and it was discovered that she could already read (and comprehend) at a fifth grade level at age five. She was not tested with Lexile, so I do not have a lexile score, but am aware of their website and its resources.
The trouble is that despite her reading abilities, she still has the attention span of a six-year old (now that she is six) and still wants pictures. We check out tons of books (and I own tons of children's books).
Additionally, Books written for fifth graders have material about which she is not ready on a social level.
It is getting a little crazy pre-reading everything (well, mostly skimming) in order to be sure book content is appropriate and to screen for challenge level.
Do any of you have experience (or short-cuts) for finding books that are challenging but still appropriate for such a child to read? For many reasons, I am now homeschooling her and she has already finished all of the Literature and Comprehension material for her second grade curriculum for this year. She has not finished the other second grade Language Arts curriculum, but she still needs to have reading time.
She has lots of books she enjoys reading, but none of those books are actually a reading challenge for her meaning her vocabulary building and sentence structure complexity level are stagnating. She finishes Magic Treehouse books in just an hour or two, but The Roman Mysteries Series (which she loves) is a little too overwhelming for her to feel good about reading alone.
How do you go about finding and screening books for such a child?
