I (Heart) Vowels

I know it’s a little crazy, but I really do love vowels.  It’s so important that our young readers learn those vowel sounds correctly so that they can decode words and use them correctly in their writing.  Activities which involve discriminating the vowels sounds are so helpful, especially for those students who are having difficulty hearing the difference between the similar sounding vowels.  I created the vowel sticks activity with a little Valentine twist for use during your small group instruction.  For children just learning the vowel sounds, you may opt to begin with only two vowels (begin with dissimlar sounding vowels such as the /o/ and /i/) and then gradually work up to using all five.  You simply say the vowel sound and have the students hold up the correct stick.  To add a little more difficulty, say a word with a short vowel sound (“cat”) and have the students hold up the correct vowel.

Click the following link to download the FREE Valentine Vowels Valentine Vowels

Sorting activities are also great when teaching and practicing short vowel sounds.  I purchased these candy chocolate heart containers in the holiday/seasonal section at Walmart.  They are the small candy heart containers and I think they were less than $1 each.  You’ll need 3 as you can use both the top and bottom of the container for sorting.   For this activity, have the student name the picture and then place the pictured heart in the correct vowel container.

Click the following link to download 16 FREE short vowel pics Valentine Vowels Sorting

Working with word families is also important for our young readers as they learn to recognize patterns in words.  When you download the Be My Valentine- Word Families activity you’ll receive 15 word family Valentine templates with 63 colorful hearts with corresponding pictures for sorting.

Click HERE to download the Be My Valentine Word Families from my TpT store.