My daughter attends Italian public school & we speak English at home. We are a bilingual American-Italian family living in Italy with under & grad degrees from the States. I am trained as a French teacher & have taught English & French for 12 years. Italian children don't learn the basics in kindergarten but they make up for it in 1st grade, learning print & cursive simultaneously & learning to read faster & achieve higher reading levels in Italian on average then their American counterparts. I never forced my daughter to do worksheets in English as I did not want to push her & create a neg. attitude. Now that she has started 1st grade, I would like to start teaching her to read in English (partly to compensate for her boredom/frustration of sitting in 1 hr of mandatory English as a Foreign language class each week. This is something she will have to suffer through for 13 years due to the Italian education system). I told her I can teach her what American children learn in school & she said she wanted to to that. I also offered to teach her some French. She has a variety of educational computer software (Dr. Seuss ABC, school zone & reader rabbit) that she has used over the last 3 years so she has learned many skills passively. What activity/workbooks do you suggest? We are passionate readers & I like the Arthur books. I considered the Brain quest workbook. She is a bright child but I held her back from starting 1st grade early to gain a firm grounding in Italian. Thank you!