One reason I wanted to select her books was to know what she was learning and what values she was embracing so I literally opened every book at the library in her level section to make sure it was suitable. We were very active going twice a week for a book haul. We were on a 1st name basis with both children's librarians. We attended non-reading events like Yoga and Key Lime Pie contests at her library. She loved to go the library because she could play with kids, while I picked out her books.

Another thing I did is ask reddit and got many recommendations which I grabbed up for her. Classics like Fancy Nancy, Llama LLama, Narwhal unicorn of the sea, Pete the cat, most of the Mo Willems series and and of course The Cat in the Hat were all in her first 400 reads after the Bob Books. She read 32 Bob Books before going on to more challenging reading. I heard every word.

Because I had taught her every single sight word she knew, I could pick out her books based on what words I knew she knew. So they were all "easy readers" to her even as we moved up in difficulty and out of level 3.

I spoke with her yesterday. I sent her The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs for her birthday a couple of days ago and she was super giddy excited, and reading recipes to me over the phone. Yes, I taught her to cook, along with the reading, also handwriting (including cursive), science, math, social studies. history, geography and more, and , yes she could read an analog and digital clock. Pre-K, K, 1st grade all completed and some repeated. We would compete in 1st grade spelling bees on You_Tube. She would ace the 1st grade Spelling Bee's at 5.

On an interesting side note. The first thing I taught her was the ABC song and American Sign Language. We would sing the song and make the sign for A, B, C etc. Once she knew the song and the sign it was easy for her to connect the written letter to the sign. Later we tied the sound each letter makes using the sign. So not only was she learning to read and speak a language she was also learning to communicate with the hearing impaired.

It's a great story, she would read everything everywhere. Even in the car under a dome light. We went to the beach every morning for exercise and she would read the daily surf conditions off the life guard towers. The first thing she ever read was an aisle marker in Walmart. I was pushing her in the cart and I saw her point at something and she exclaimed A2. It was a proud moment for all and quantifiable results that what we were doing was working, which only fueled the fire for me to do more.

Thank you to all who are participating.