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Has anyone used this for a 2nd grader? I see the reading level is 3.0-4.1 and I got nervous. My daughter is a great reader but without seeing these books, I am unsure if she can read them. The emerging books seem too easy, though--at least, the Bible does. Any thoughts??

If you feel she isn't ready for DITHOR 2 books, you could start part way through the emerging readers. That would be a great DITHOR readiness plan. Also, remember you can do the genres in DITHOR In any order, so you can start with the lowest reading leveled book in the pack to use and go in order of reading level. Still, using the last several titles from the emerging readers could be a great transition for both of you!

FWIW, my 1st grade son is in public school this semester and an average reader. They have him reading 2.0 books for homework. So, really I think the reading levels for the books in the DITHOR pack correspond well with the reading abilities of the average 2nd grader for the most part, with some adding a bit more challenge.

If you look at the levels of the emerging readers, you will see that towards the end they are about on the same level as DITHR level 2 book pack. So if your dd is reading the last emerging readers comfortably then she will be ready to move onto the level 2 book pack with no problems.

Maybe you could check at your library to see if they carry a few of them, so you could get an idea of how challenging they are. In my opinion the level 2 book pack is deffinetly a 3rd-4th grade reading level. Some of the books are shorter, but the Biography title was a much longer book than my ds had ever read. He will be finishing the last chapter of it tomorrow. Like another poster said though you can always start part way through the emergent readers. The ERs really start to pick up speed when you hit Buffalo Bill and the Pony Express. Also the ones from then on are mostly historical fiction that correlate nicely with Beyond, or Bigger. My ds loved all of those titles, and I feel they were excellent in helping him gain fluency. I would not have wanted to miss them. He just finished the ER a few weeks ago and he is at the end of second grade now.

The main difference we've noticed with the level 2 DITHOR books and the Emerging Readers isn't difficulty, but length. So I just gave her extra reading days. I split her reading up into 30 days instead of 15 and did the DITHOR workbook and teachers guide stuff every other day. It's worked nicely and now she's going to start the 5th genre after our spring break and she's reading the whole books in 15 days.

Thank you all for the opinions and great ideas!