What is a vowel for kids
What are vowels and consonants?
We explain what vowels and consonants are and how primary-school children are taught to identify CVC, CCVC and CVCC words, vowel digraphs and consonant digraphs.
or Register to add to your saved resources
What are vowels and consonants?
The alphabet is made up of 26 letters, 5 of which are vowels (a, e, i, o, u) and the rest of which are consonants.
A vowel is a sound that is made by allowing breath to flow out of the mouth, without closing any part of the mouth or throat.
A consonant is a sound that is made by blocking air from flowing out of the mouth with the teeth, tongue, lips or palate ('b' is made by putting your lips together, 'l' is made by touching your palate with your tongue).
The letter 'y' makes a consonant sound when at the beginning of a word ('yacht', 'yellow') but a vowel sound when at the end of a word ('sunny', 'baby').
Watch your child's grammar confidence grow
- Perfect Punctuation Workbook
- Grammar Games Pack
- PLUS 100s of other grammar resources
Download Your Free Packs Today
Vowels and consonants in primary school
Children learn all the letters of the alphabet in the Foundation Stage (nursery and Reception years). This means they learn to look at a letter and then make its sound, but also to hear the sound of a letter and be able to write it down.
In Reception children move onto learning to read and write CVC words (consonant, vowel, consonant) such as cat, top, hit, nap.
They then move on to read and write CCVC words such as trip, stop, pram.
They also learn CVCC words such as milk, lamp, tusk.
Children will also learn that sometimes two vowels are put together to make one sound, such as ai, oo, ea, ie which can be found in words such as rain, boot, read and pie. When two vowels are put together to make one sound, this is called a vowel digraph.
They also learn that sometimes two consonants are put together to make one sound, such as th, ch and sh which can be found in words such as bath, chip and mash. When two consonants are put together to make one sound, this is called a consonant digraph.
Teachers may or may not make children aware of all the linguistic vocabulary in bold above. It is not necessarily important that they know these words or can define them: the most important thing is that they learn to read and write individual letters and words with confidence through thorough step-by-step phonics activities.
Children moving up the school may notice certain things about vowels and consonants. For example, in English we rarely have three or more vowels together; beautiful, queue, liaise, quail, quiet, squeal are some of the few words that use this spelling pattern.
Another thing children may notice is that every word in the English language contains a vowel. This is quite a useful thing to know when playing hangman: go for the vowels first!
More like this
What are CVC words, CCVC words and CVCC words?
Phonics teaching step-by-step
What is a digraph?
Recognising short vowels in CVC words (Phase 2 phonics)
What is ‘magic e’ or a split digraph?
Reading vowels (Phase 2 phonics)
Two-letter vowel sounds: /ee/ /oo/ /ur/ (Phase 3 phonics)
Joining vowels: handwriting practice activity
Using unstressed vowel words
“Vowels For Kids: How To Identify If Your Children Are Ready To Learn Vowels?”
- 1 Comment
- AK
- November 26, 2021
Do your children struggle with vowels? Do they find it difficult to grasp the different variants of the vowels? Are you tired of looking for effective ways to teach vowels to preschoolers? Then your search ends here.
This article talks about ways to teach vowel sounds to your kids.
But before you get into it, it is important to understand the meaning of vowels, the reason for your kids to learn them, and the right age to do it.
What are vowels?
Out of the 26 letters of the English alphabet, letters A, E, I, O, and U are called vowels. Letters other than these 5 are called consonants. Vowels are present within all the words found in the English Language. So without learning vowel sounds, it is impossible to pronounce any word in the language.
So, what’s the difference between vowels and consonants? The difference lies in the way they are pronounced. When vowels are produced, there is no restriction of the passage of air from the lungs to the mouth. But when consonants are produced, the air passage is restricted by either the throat, lips, teeth, or tongue.
There are two types of vowel sounds in the English Language- long vowels and short vowels.
Long vowel sounds are pronounced like the letter it designates, while short vowel sounds are pronounced differently from the letter it designates. Short vowel sounds always occur after a consonant and cannot be placed at the end of a syllable.
Why is it important to teach your children vowels?
Teaching vowels are crucial to develop good reading skills in children. It helps children understand the difference between CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) words like pat and pit, bat and bet, etc. Without a good understanding of vowels, children often find it difficult to read and spell words right. So, learning vowel sounds is indispensable in your children’s life.
But if you’re wondering what’s the right age for your children to learn vowels, then read on.
How to Identify if your children are ready to learn vowels?
Vowels are the building blocks of the English language. Understanding the difference between long and short vowels can seem like a herculean task for your children if they aren’t ready to learn vowels.
And here’s how you can know whether your little champs are ready.
When kids learn to distinguish between beginning and ending sounds in words, it is a sign that they are ready to learn vowels. To know this, pay close attention to the way they spell CVC words like PEN or PIN. The sound they produce will often be wrong. But the good news here is that they are now aware of the existence of something else between P and N. They can now hear some other sound between P and N.
And this development of recognizing vowel sounds is a sign for you to introduce vowels to your children!
How to teach vowel sounds to your children?
Here are some actionable tips to teach vowels to your preschoolers:
- Start with Names of Vowels
Begin by teaching them the names of each vowel. The chief aim here is to make the kids learn, repeat, and memorise the vowels. There are many activities for teaching vowel sounds. Some of them are as follows:
- Use Songs to Teach Vowels
Using songs to teach vowel sounds is the most effective way to begin.
Children enjoy singing songs and consider it a fun activity rather than a learning activity. Tweaking the nursery rhyme ‘Old MacDonald’ is one of the most popular ways to teach vowels. Instead of the usual ‘Ee i ee i o’, substitute it with ‘A, E, I, O, U.’ You can find the animated video of this new version here.
- Teach them the Hand Motions
Some children find it easy to grasp things when they learn by touching or by physical means. They are called kinesthetic-tactile learners. If your children belong to this category, teaching hand motions is the easiest way to teach them vowels. They will learn to find a connection between hand motion, vowel sound, and shape. This helps them to learn faster and retain longer.
2. Short Vowels Before Long Vowels
Introduce your children to vowels by teaching them short vowels first. Having a thorough understanding of short vowels is required before learning long vowels. If your children fail to grasp short and long vowels, it will have an undesirable effect on their reading skills.
Constant revision is the only shortcut to make kids good with vowels. There are many interesting activities for teaching short vowel sounds to children. Some of the most effective and easy ones are here:
- Learn with placards
Placards made out of ice cream sticks and paper can be used to teach short vowels to kids. Each short vowel should be written on a single placard. In this activity, you should say words aloud and ask your children to raise the placard with the right short vowel in it.
For example, your kids should hold up the placard with the vowel ‘a’ if you say the word CAT aloud. If you say the word SIT aloud, your kids should hold up the placard with ‘i’ in it.
- Trace on sand
Making kids trace vowels on sand is a multi-sensory approach and hence is one of the most effective ways to teach them vowel sounds. To perform this activity, spread sand on a plate and give it to your kids. Then say a vowel sound aloud, make kids repeat the sound, and make them trace the vowel on the sand.
If you find it difficult to find sand, download any sand drawing apps from Google Play. This would be a new experience for the kids and will help retain their interest for a longer time.
- Practice In Front of a Mirror
Make children practice saying vowels in front of a mirror. When they observe the shape of their mouth while pronouncing these vowels, they will understand the subtle difference in pronunciation.
For instance, voicing vowels ‘e’ and ‘i’ can be confusing for many early learners. But when they practice in front of a mirror, they will learn to distinguish it better.
3. Take it to the Next Level with Long Vowels
Once your children master short vowels, then you can move to long vowels. Long vowels are quite tricky so give children ample time to understand them. The different spellings of long-vowels can be quite overwhelming for them if introduced all at once. Hence, it is important to introduce one vowel at a time.
Just like with short vowels, practice is the only way for your child to wade through the initial confusion. There are many activities to teach long vowels interestingly. Some of them are:
- Long or Short Game
This is a simple but effective activity to help children get familiar with long and short vowels. Say a word aloud and ask your children to identify if the vowel used in the word is short or long. Worksheets available on the internet for long and short vowels can come in handy for this activity.
So if you say the word CAKE, children should identify and say that the vowel used is ‘Long A.’If you say the word ‘BAT,’ they should identify that the vowel used is ‘Short A.’
- Sort and Learn
Another interesting activity you can try with your kids is sorting. You can create a list of words using long vowels and ask them to sort them into groups of different long vowels. You can either write the words or download a worksheet for the same.
Give words like snake, train, grapes, and whale. The children should be able to group them under the different long vowel forms of ‘A.’ For example, the word snake should come under the group ‘a-i’ and so on.
- Find the Correctly Spelt Word
This is a bit more advanced than the rest of the activities. Hence, it is suitable once your children become experts at other activities mentioned. The task involves giving them three or four spellings of a word as options and asking them to choose the right one. The options included should be spelling variations of the same long vowel.
For example, you can give options, payne, pain, and pane and ask your children to identify the right word.
Wrapping Up
Vowels are a hard nut to crack for your little champs. And practice is the only way to help them grasp it. But take an effort to make the learning process as easy and interesting as possible. Follow the fun activities described in this article and watch them fall in love with vowels.
How to explain to a child the difference between vowels and consonants?. Blog Logo-Expert
Elementary school teachers notice that phonetic analysis for toddlers is one of the most difficult tasks. Indeed, in order to determine what sound is in front of you, the child needs to analyze it properly and remember how vowels and consonants are pronounced. Without a clear understanding of the difference, the child will be constantly confused.
To help your baby learn to distinguish sounds, follow these guidelines:
Inventive children will show you how to sing the sound Z or M, and then confusion will not be avoided. The fact is that all sounds in our language can be divided into 3 groups: vowels are voice, voiced consonants are voice and noise, deaf consonants are only noise. Sonorants are closest to vowels: p, l, n, m, d. Therefore, the argument that vowels are sung and sonorants are not - do not use for the sake of your own further peace of mind.
The main conclusion he must come to is that when pronouncing consonants, air is constantly being prevented from easily jumping out of the mouth: either teeth, or lips, and the sound M generally comes out through the nose.
Give the baby a mirror - let him compare how the mouth behaves when he pronounces vowels and consonants in turn. nine0003
-
Tell a story: “Mouth is a house that has doors, a floor, and a ceiling. The vowel sounds lived happily and cheerfully in this house - they could easily run out into the street for a walk and no one interfered with them.
Say all the vowels - show that the mouth is really open, the tongue is calm, and the air comes out unhindered. “But once an evil snake settled in this house and did not let out sounds on the street. Either he will press them from the side, then he will close his teeth. Say the consonants. “But the consonant sounds were smart and they came up with how to outwit a snake. They began to hold on to the handles with vowel sounds and together run past the snake. Try". The child should notice that when pronouncing open syllables, the air comes out freely. “So, since then, sounds began to live together and the snake was not afraid.
” nine0003
Note that individual consonants are read briefly, but together with vowels they can be drawn for quite a long time.
Prepare cards with pictures and words: ball, house, cheese, whale, meadow, forest. These words contain all vowel sounds. Put the first card in front of the child and make a riddle: "This word has an unusual sound that you can shout the loudest, sing it the longest, when you pronounce it, neither your teeth, nor your lips, nor your tongue interfere." Give the child the opportunity to shout out the sound and look at himself in the mirror. Be sure the kid will find the answer! nine0003
And if you want to learn how to distribute the stages of corrective work to form the correct sound pronunciation, master the production of sounds with the help of speech therapy probes; learn how to activate kinesthetic sensations in the oral area and how to use the V-Zibe massager; then we are waiting for you at the mini-course: "Sound production: features of the beginning of work and the formation of sound pronunciation.
"
how to explain to a child the difference between vowels and consonants, what rules to remember
Contents of the article
- Introduction to terms
- Letters and sounds
the sounds of the Russian alphabet are divided into these two large groups. Without a clear assimilation of this material, it is impossible to further study the grammar rules of not only the native, but also any foreign language. nine0003
Acquaintance with terms
It is easy to remember information that is associated in the brain with something understandable, familiar. Therefore, before explaining to the child the difference between vowels and consonants, you need to tell why they are called that way.
The sounds that are drawn, sung, cannot be pronounced without the participation of a voice, or a voice, as our ancestors used to say. That is why they, and after them the letters denoting them, are called vowels. When the child understands this relationship, you can proceed to explain the concept of consonants - it was formed from two words: “with vowels”, that is, “consonant” - “neighbors of vowels”.
nine0003
Such an approach to presenting information will not only allow a preschooler to memorize the terms and their meaning well, but also arouse interest in the origin of words and the development of language in general. To show the difference between vowels and consonants, a table in which they differ in colors clearly helps: the former are indicated in red, and the latter in blue.
When choosing a magnetic alphabet for a 2-3 year old baby, be guided, first of all, by its safety. But for older children it will be useful to deal with letters correctly divided by color. nine0003
Letters and sounds
To learn the difference between letters and sounds, the basic rule will help: we read and write letters, and we speak and hear sounds. In classes with younger students, teachers always use multi-colored cards, diagrams, and special devices in the form of houses. Such visualization allows you to remember what colors denote vowels and consonants, soft and hard, and sometimes even voiced and deaf sounds.
To highlight stressed vowels, the corresponding superscript is used, and unstressed vowels are underlined with one line. nine0003
There are only 6 vowels in Russian: [a], [o], [u], [s], [i], [e], and 10 vowels: A, Z, O, Yo , U, Yu, S, I, E, E. In order for the child to understand why the number does not match, and learn to distinguish between sounds and letters, you need to say them all in turn with him. This experience will show that some letters can be the designation of two sounds at once: I [ya], E [yo], Yu [yu] and E [ye]. It must be noted that this does not always happen, and give examples: in the words “spruce”, “yula”, “announcement” we hear two sounds in such letters, and in the words “stranded”, “chandelier”, “five” - one by one. nine0003
Reasoning like this, one can lead the student to the idea that consonants influence the sound of vowels - and vice versa. There are 21 consonant letters in Russian, and there are much more sounds - 36. Before giving the child lists of these letters and sounds for review, it is advisable to help him guess why there are so many sounds.
