Teaching vowel sounds to children

How To Help Your Child Learn Long And Short Vowel Sounds

It’s not uncommon for children to struggle with vowels. Most kids actually pick up consonant pronunciations much more quickly. Why is that?

One of the challenges with vowel sounds is that they can’t exactly be “felt” in the mouth. With consonants, kids can feel the friction created while using their tongue, lips, or teeth to produce the sounds. To produce a vowel sound, you only need to adjust the shape of your mouth.

Then there’s the challenge of distinguishing between long and short vowels or two similar vowel sounds. In a nutshell, learning vowels can be a monster!

But have no fear; we’re here to help! We’ve compiled a step-by-step guide you can use to help your child finally connect the dots with both short and long vowel sounds.

When Is Your Child Ready To Learn Vowels?

It’s challenging to teach your child vowel sounds if they cannot hear them. This is why one of the most important signs showing that a child is ready to learn vowel sounds is when they can hear the vowel sounds in simple words.

For instance, let’s say your child tries to spell a simple CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant) word like “cat.”

Even if they may misspell the word by writing “cet” instead of “cat,” this is still a beautiful moment, so celebrate it to the fullest because it indicates that your child can hear that there’s a letter between the C and the N.

If you feel that your young learner is developmentally ready to start learning more about vowels, how can you help? Let’s take a look.

Tips For Teaching Short Vowel Sounds

Since short vowels have more consistent spelling, this is a great place to start when teaching your young learner.

1) Begin With The Names Of The Vowels

Teaching your child A, E, I, O, U is the first step in helping to familiarize them with vowels. We recommend taking these one vowel at a time to avoid overwhelming your young learner.

The good news is that there are various tactics you can use to help your child remember their vowels.

Besides sounding them out, you can also help your child create three-dimensional letters with something as easy and accessible as PlayDoh. To help emphasize the differences between the letters, use a different color for each vowel.

As your child feels and creates vowels, more of their senses will be engaged, and this will help them get familiar and comfortable with the five vowels and their sounds.

2) Differentiate Between The Vowels

This point on our list is connected to the previous one. Still, it deserves its own emphasis because it can be easy for children to struggle with differentiating between the vowels.

The example we used earlier of a child spelling “cet” instead of “cat” is pretty common, especially when you consider how similar the sounds are to each other. This is why it’s important to make the letters distinct.

To add some fun into your child’s learning, you might consider using stick puppets made with the five vowels. Simply attach a printout of each letter onto a popsicle stick, and then let your imagination run wild!

A can go to the store with E; I can head out to the beach with O; and so on. While acting out your scene, remember to emphasize the difference between the letters and keep sounding the vowels out clearly.

3) Introduce Word Families For Simple CVC Words

Word families can be described as a group of words that have a common pattern or features. Helping children learn these allows them to spell and sound out related words.

For example, a child who learns the word family -at, will have an easier time spelling cat, mat, hat, etc.

Remember to take it one word family at a time. This will help prevent your child from feeling overwhelmed with all the new information.

Here are some activities we recommend for working on word families:

• Say a word like “hat” and ask if it has the /a/ sound or the /i/ sound. Focus on sounding the letters out, not writing them, so your child can hear the differences better.
• Say two words and ask which has /o/ as the middle sound.
• Make a Tic-Tac-Toe board and put a vowel in each cell. Before placing their mark in a cell, your child will need to identify the vowel with its short sound.
• Sound out CVC words by emphasizing the phonemes. For example, say /t/…/a/…/p/… and then blend together into tap.
• Place a t and a p with a space in-between. Ask your child to fill in the missing letter that will help form “top.”
• Switch the vowels. For this, you can play with magnetic letters. Ask your child to turn “tap” to “tip” and then to “top.”

Here are some great words with short vowel sounds to practice at home:

Short “A” Sound Examples:

• Cap
• Bat
• Bad
• Cat
• Dad
• Lap
• Tap

Short “E” Sound Examples:

• Bed
• Get
• Pen
• Bet
• Wet
• Fed
• Net
• Ten

Short “I” Sound Examples:

• Bin
• Sip
• Tip
• Zip
• Did
• Fit
• Nip
• Win

Short “O” Sound Examples:

• Rod
• Cod
• Jog
• Dot
• Fog
• Mop
• Pot
• Top

Short “U” Sound Examples:

• Bun
• Cut
• Pup
• Sun
• Sum
• Run
• Fun
• Hug

Tips For Teaching Long Vowel Sounds

1) Form Long Vowel Sounds

Although long vowel sounds are typically easier for kids to learn, we normally teach short vowels first. Why is that? It takes two vowels to make a long sound, and this can be tricky for kids to understand at first.

To get started with long vowel sounds, we begin teaching the silent e. It’s important for kids to understand that every vowel will change its sound when a silent e is put after the CVC form of a word.

For instance, if you put an e after the CVC word tap, the word changes to tape, and the vowel sound produced changes.

To help your child grasp this concept, begin with phonemic awareness. Ask them:

• Are tap and tape the same?
• Say the individual sounds slowly — t-a-p and t-ae-p.
• What changed?

You can also use magnetic letters to help illustrate the power of the silent e.

First, show your child the letter a. Make the short sound and then explain that you will give the power to its own name. Who can give the power? E! Tap the magnetic e on the magnetic a, adding it to the end of the word after, and — voila! — you now have a new word.

Using magnetic letters, you can then change tap to tape, bit to bite, dot to dote, and so on. While your child will hear that the sound changes, using magnetic letters will help them see what vowel contributes to the change in sound.

You can also use flip cards to demonstrate this concept. Fold the last eighth or so of an index card, and then write a CVC word, like tap, on the unfolded part and an e on the folded part. When you unfold the card, the word will change from tap to tape!

Note: The long o and u sounds can be a bit more complicated, so we recommend holding off on those until your child has gotten a good grasp on the others.

2) Correct The Spelling

To help your child gain a better understanding of long vowel sounds, why not play a game to help strengthen their knowledge?

To play this game, show your child the incorrect spelling of a CVC word and have them correct it. For example, using magnetic letters, spell out f-i-n-o but pronounce it as fine. Now your child, who’s learned the power of the silent e, will be able to replace the o with an e.

Here are some great words you can use for this activity:

Long “A” Sound Examples:

• Bake
• Lake
• Fame
• Date
• Fate
• Cake
• Make

Long “I” Sound Examples:

• Hide
• Fine
• Time
• Line
• Mine
• Pine
• Wife
• Ride

Long “O” Sound Examples:

• Joke
• Rose
• Woke
• Poke

Learning Vowels One Day At A Time

Learning vowels can be challenging for children. That’s why it’s important to take it one day at a time.

Help your child learn their basic vowels, start with the short CVC words, and then after some practice, help them nail the long vowel sounds, which are a little trickier.

Using the right strategy, you can give your young learner the confidence to face any unfamiliar word they may come across during reading activities.

With the help of the HOMER Learn & Grow App, continue exposing your child to all sorts of stories and reading activities. This will not only help them with their vowels, but it will also set a solid foundation for their literacy journey!

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Tips for Teaching Vowel Sounds

Learning letter sounds is one of the first steps in learning to read. And while most consonant sounds come easily to kids, vowel sounds can be an entirely different monster. For one, vowel sounds are not “felt” as much in the mouth as most consonant sounds, making it harder for kids to hear them. This is evident in kids’ invented spellings, such as VN for van. Vowel sounds can also be spelled several different ways, making reading and spelling them tricky {even for some adults}.

Today, I’m taking a bunch of readers’ questions about teaching vowel sounds and combining them to share some tips for teaching vowel sounds. If your young reader {or struggling reader} is stuck on learning vowels and vowel patterns, I hope that this post will bring some clarity.

*This post contains affiliate links.

{Update: This became a much longer post than I first intended it to be. 🙂 My best advice is to skim through the questions, which are in bold print if you have a specific question that you’d like answered. If you have another question related to teaching vowel sounds, please feel free to leave a comment.}

Tips for Teaching Vowel Sounds

Please note that my answers may not be your answers and that’s okay.

My goal in teaching vowel sounds is two-fold:
1- to teach in a developmentally appropriate way and
2- to teach the most common vowel patterns first because these are most needed for kids in their reading and spelling.

How do I know my child is ready for vowel sounds?

Answer: Just like there are reading readiness signs, there are also signs that a child is ready to learn more about vowels.  Children are typically ready to start hearing vowel sounds after they can hear beginning and ending sounds in words consistently.

My favorite way to find out what sounds kids hear in words is to closely watch them spell {or misspell} simple CVC words. They will begin trying to include the vowel in words. Often times, they may use the wrong vowel, if left to spell independently {such as FEN for fan} and that’s okay.

This is a sign that they can hear that something comes in between the F and N and helps you know they are ready to learn more about them. I always celebrate this moment as a a teacher because this is a BIG step for many young learners. 

Where do I start with teaching vowel sounds?

Answer: Short vowel sounds are much more consistent in their spellings makes them the perfect place to start. This is especially true if you explore the short vowels through word families.

Our Short Vowel Sounds Resource Pack includes wall charts, book marks, and a printable chart to help kids learn their short vowel sounds.

How do I teach short vowel sounds?

Answer 1: Start with word families…one at a time.

You can read more about word families and how effective they can be for beginning readers. Learning word family patterns helps kids to see that words’ spellings are connected; and because they can read or spell one word, they can read or spell other words. For example, if kids can read and spell cat, they can read and spell other words like rat, mat, hat, fat, or even that and flat. This is very powerful.

Word families are also very predictable in spelling as well as vowel sound. For example, the a sound in cat is different than the a sound in can {at least where I’m from}, but -at words all share the same a sound and the same -at spelling, making it easier for kids to learn.

The key is introducing word families one at a time, especially at first. Once a child is comfortable with that family, move on to a new word family.

You can find some of the beginning word family work we do in Reading the Alphabet.

Once kids have a few word families under their belt, start mixing them up. I did this with the printables I made for the BOB Books, Set 1. The Measured Mom also has some fantastic Short Vowel Word Family Mats and Short Vowel Word Family Houses that work well for teaching kids short vowel word families.

Answer 2: Some kids don’t respond well to the chunking part of learning word families, such as f+at. Marie, of All About Learning, shares that drawing attention to the word families chunks can actually confuse some children, especially if they are showing signs of dyslexia.

So if word family chunks aren’t working, use word families without drawing attention to the chunk that they all share. For example, instead of reading fat like f + at {chunking the -at separate from f}, kids could sound it out f – a – t {as three separate sounds}.

For struggling spellers and readers, it helps once again to stick with one word family before moving on to other word families. Some of my favorite resources for kids learning to sound out those short vowel CVC words are our Sound it Out Strips and The Measured Mom’s Short Vowel Mats.

If your child continues to struggle with sounding out simple short vowel words, the ideas in my post, Helping Kids Sound Out Words, might be helpful for you.

When do kids start reading longer short vowel words?

Answer: As kids are becoming comfortable with short vowel CVC words and moving out of needing them in word families, they are typically ready to start spelling words with blends and digraphs in them. These include words such as clam, step, bath, or tent. {If these terms are new to you, be sure to visit my blends and digraphs post.

Have you seen these free resources that include blends and digraphs?

• Blends/Digraphs Chart
• Ending Blend Clip Cards
• digraph card games
• Blend BINGO
• MEGA pack Blends & Digraphs Game Boards.
• The Measured Mom also has a huge pack of Word Slider cards, which include short vowel words with blends and digraphs.

What do I teach after short vowel words?

Answer: Once kids are comfortable with short vowels with simple blends and digraphs, you may be tempted to move on to long vowels. But there are a couple more “stops” you can make before you arrive at long vowels. While it isn’t “wrong” to move to long vowels, some kids aren’t ready for that step just yet and that’s okay.

Two extra “stops” you can take are:

1. Teaching kids words that have blends and digraphs at the beginning AND end of words. Instead of a simple word like dump, work on reading and spelling words like stump or thump.

Our Short Vowel Spelling app does this with short vowels, starting with word families, moving to short vowel words with one blend or digraph and then challenging kids with longer short vowel words.

2. Teaching kids the bossy r patterns, which are ar, er, ir, or, and ur. Compare them to the short vowel words they already know, like the sorts at the end of Words Their Way’s Letter-Name Alphabet Spellers supplement book.

My child is not understanding the CVCe {long vowel} pattern. What do I do to help him get it?

Answer: Before you introduce words with long vowel patterns in them, sometimes it can be a great idea to just listen for sounds in long vowel words versus short vowel words.

Our Long Vowel Listening Game Pages are the perfect way to get kids listening for the long vowel sounds they hear in words.

It can help by teaching kids long vowel patterns by word families. The -ake family is one of my favorite word families to start with because you can spell so many words with it. I have an older post that shows a few ideas for introducing long vowel families specifically with the -ake family. The Measured Mom also has a set of Long Vowel Word Family Mats, starting with CVCe words and moving to other long vowel patterns.

There are lots of long vowel patterns. Is there an order in which I need teach them?

Answer: Some long vowel sounds are not as common as others. For example, the ui pattern is not as common as the ew pattern for long u vowels. The best place to start is with the most common long vowel patterns because this is what kids see more in books and need more in their spelling.

Typically, I start with the CVCe patterns, like the ones in our Long Vowel Spelling Game. If I had to break it down, this is how I introduce long vowel patterns {give or take}:

• CVCe patterns {a_e, i_e, o_e and u_e}
• Very Common Vowel Patterns {ee, ea, ai, oa, igh, etc.}
• Common Vowel Patterns {ay, ue, ie, ow, long oo, ew}
• Less Common Vowel Patterns {ui, ei, final y etc. }

Do I need to teach any other vowel patterns beyond short vowels and long vowels?

Answer: Yes. Like the bossy r patterns, there are other vowel patterns that are needed for reading and spelling. They include patterns like oo {in the word foot}, au, aw, ou, oi and oy. Besides the oo pattern, many of these are less common and could be taught alongside the less common vowel patterns.

More Resources for Teaching Vowel Sounds

• Phonics Book Series {from The Measured Mom}
• BOB Books {check out all our FREE Printables and Lesson Outlines/Lesson Plans}
• Words Their Way – love their supplement books
• All About Spelling

Short Vowel Word Study

• Short Vowel Word Study App
• Long Vowel Word Study App

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Learning letters and sounds with children

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