Bob Books are great, too! Definitely same concept, I just like the aesthetic of the Scholastic ones better.
Definitely nothing to worry about! He'll get there, especially with his awesome mom working with him and caring. Honestly, at this stage it's just as valuable to listen to you read/partner read.
I had to dig in the memory banks to remember what kinder was like haha. Tried to wipe all those phonics lessons out of my head. Now, you may already know these tricks. If you want to really do a deep dive, it's call Guided Reading. But these are the supports teachers give before a reading:
1. Teacher gives a short introduction to the story that typically says or hints at the sentence frame. Ie if the frame is "She wears a _" then the intro might say today we are going to read about Suzy and what she wears every day.
2. Preview challenging vocabulary: Before reading, we go over unknown words. We start by identifying them in the photo then have students point to the word on the page that looks like it might spell that word. Then we read it together.
3. Students go through a picture walk. This means that before we read a story, we look at each illustration and talk about what we see. This is when a teacher will re-introduce the sentence frame. "What does Suzy wear in this picture? .. Exactly, she wears a _."
4. Talk about the book: talk about beginning or ending letters/sounds of sight words, talk about what they liked, talk about if they can make a connection (does this remind them of anything in another book, a movie/tv show, their life...)
All of this is quick. Shouldn't take more than 15 minutes start to finish.
If he is disinterested in the words or having trouble focusing, sometimes will give kids a line reader/guide reader or like a little fun pointer he can use instead of his finger. They are usually a fun transparent color and kids think it's fun. My only cautionary is that some schools/teachers actually count off for tracking with the finger. Every school I have worked at will dock points for fluency/ that it also typically affects fluency.
TLDR this next section: Here, kids must turn 5 by the first day of kinder. Everything at this stage develops so rapidly, so much can change it two years.
As far as differences in levels and expectations:
end of November (usually 5ish): Read Level A + show book handling skills + identify first or last letter plus their sound of a given word on a page
One line books, 20-40 words total, repeated sentence frame. Kids should be able to identify the first or last letter/ sound of a given word on a page
end of March (usually 5.5): Level B
Similar levels of heavy pre-reading support. Only notable difference is that frames may be longer and less consistent. They usually follow a predictable pattern but unlike a not every page is exactly the same. We also start introducing conversations about books: what was your favorite part? Does this remind you of anything/can you make a connection?
end of June (usually close to/ are 6): Level C (keep in mind, most kids have turned 6 by now)
Big jump. The words double and each page now has two lines. There is a predictable pattern, but now there are 2 unknown words per page.
