Can I? Short Vowel Word Game

I decided it would be fun to review reading words with all of the short vowel sounds. I had the idea to have the sentence "Can I _____ the ______?" and then have two piles of words, one pile has verbs (only simple short vowel words) to put in the first blank and the second pile has nouns (only simple short vowel words) to put int he second blank. She will get some silly phrases like, "Can I rip the sock?" and then more normal phrases like, "Can I hug the Mom?" We do a couple of these a day and she enjoys it. If you are going to print these, you have to save the first picture (above) as a .jpg. The rest should just print fine by clicking "more" and then "print." You might just want to print one sheet of verbs and one sheet of nouns to see if your kids like it :) The first four sheets are the nouns, the last two sheets are the verbs. My mom is going to use this with the grandchildren she is visiting right now and wanted me to post this. Hope someone else can use this too!

Publish at Scribd or explore others:

Click on "more" above the documents and then press "print"

Short Vowel Readers!

I always struggle to find books my children can read when they are first starting reading. When my children have mastered short vowels, they want to read books! That is why we created a few short vowel books we have posted for free here. There are so few books out there that only have short vowels :) I recently found a great series!!



The Now I'm Reading! Series by Nora Gaydos is adorable! I'm so happy I have found it.

Things I love about these books:

1. There are 20 books for short vowel words. Can you believe it, 20!

2. Each set comes with a cute set of stickers that coordinate with each book. The children have 4 stickers per book. Each time they read the book by themselves out loud, they get a sticker. I love repetition and my daughter loves putting on a sticker each time she reads it!

3. Each page builds on the previous page. Each story starts with two words, the next page has three words (repeating the first two words) and it continues to build on the first two words as the story goes on. It is a perfect way to build confidence in the early readers!

4. The stories are actually fun to read! They are cute and clever. They are not boring to read over and over again! Sorry, I am not a fan of the BOB books. It makes it so much more enjoyable for my daughter and for me to read these books :)

Click on the two sets of stories above to find out more about them, read other great reviews and buy them :)

Free Short i Book and Short o Book

The order we like to teach our kids short vowel words as far as vowels go is:

short a

short o

short i

short u

short e

My mom likes to teach the short e last because it is so similar to the short a and short i sounds. There are also not that many short e words.

Here are the mini books I made. One uses only short i words and the other has both short i words and short o words. Again, fold them like a greeting card. The big pig has two greeting cards with one stuck in the middle. It starts with A Pig. I hope that makes sense. Enjoy!

The Dog Bit

The Big Pig

This is page one that is folded like a greeting card. It is the front and back cover.

This is page 2 that is folded and put inside page 1.

If you download these, please leave us a comment. If we get some response, we can post more.

Teaching Short a words & Free Short a Mini Books

It is such a fun experience teaching my daughter, A, to read. She gets excited reading simple words and laughs so much for silly pictures that go along with them. In our family, when we teach our kids to read, we do it a little differently.

Most people teach children to sound out each sound and then blend them all together like, for the word,

Pat

/p/, /a/, /t/ = pat

The child sounds out three sounds and then says them faster and then all together to form a word.

My mother has taught all her grandchildren to say the first two letters together, so,

Pat

/pa/ /t/ = pat

The child sounds out the pa and then the ending /t/ sound. She has found that they learn to read faster because of this. She learned this way of teaching children to read from how they teach children to read in Spanish. They teach them to read the words by syllables. When children try to pronounce each letter sound individually, they tend to say the beginning sound with an "uh" sound like "puh" instead of only the "p" sound alone. So they end up saying /pu/ /a/ /t/ instead of /p/ /a/ /t/. We avoid this by combining the vowel with the beginning sound like /pa/.

We practice short "a" syllables to get fluency. So we have a list of short "a" combinations like ca, fa, da, la, ta, ga, ma, na, etc. After they can quickly say all of these with the short "a" sound, then we add the ending consonants like taking the ca and adding t to make cat.

This makes the sounds blend because you can elongate a vowel easily. So they can say "caaaaa t" and it still sounds like cat.

I have enjoyed teaching my daughter in this way and I think she has caught on faster than if she had to sound out each little sound in a word.

I have been looking for books online and plan to buy BOB books. I have not bought any of these easy readers yet, but my mom created some simple ones that A actually gets a big kick out of. I will post them here. You can fold them in fourths like a greeting card and it becomes a mini-book. Enjoy!

Dad Sat



Sal Sat




I just made up a cute mini book for short i and o for my daughter today. I will post those another day.

If you download these, please leave us a comment. If we get some response, we can post more.

More Reading Activities

I have been working with E all week teaching her reading. If you change the activity every few minutes, it is surprising how long a child of 4 or 5 can keep interested in doing reading activities.

We played matching games with pictures and word cards. I get pictures off of Microsoft Office Download Clip Art. It is fantastic. I make cards with Short Vowel words. Here is an example of a page. I print it on card stock and have them ready for all kinds of fun games.

One game I do when I have something I want them to learn is the Slapping game. I set two word cards in front of her and she has to slap the one I say. For example, I put down "the" and "this". I use this a lot with the sight words she needs to know. Then I put down another word card and we do a few slaps then I add another one. We get up to about six words. This helps her read them faster.

Anything can be a reward. She reads a list of words and the little remote control dog we bought her at Walgreens barks and says "Good job."

I love to use a stop watch. If she is reading her pile of short U words. I start the stop watch and she reads as many as she can in one minute. Then the next time she does it she gets a smartie for each one she reads more than she did the first time. So if she read 16 the first time, if she reads 19 the next time she gets three smarties. Games like this or counting who won in memory are also excellent for their counting and math understanding.

Another game she love is the Quiet Game. I set four words out in front of her. I have ten in all but just four are set out at a time. I act out a word and she picks it up. I set out another word so there are still four words in front of her. Then I act out another word. Neither of us can say any thing till she has picked out all ten words. We can take turns being the one who acts out the words.

Here are some work sheets we did this week. She likes to cut and paste so she cuts out the words and pastes them into the correct box.

Free Mini Books for Beginning Reading

We are busy homeschooling! We had our first week with my oldest for kindergarten this last week. I will post our plan for the year later.

I had to share this incredible resource! My mom found this wonderful program and they have great lesson plans and mini books and activities for kindergartners. They have free mini books for short vowel words. They also have a plan for the curriculum. Check it out!

http://education.byu.edu/projectseel/resources/db.html

I have my granddaughter E (turned 5 last month) with me this week. She arrived last night (Sunday) and will stay till we go visit them on Friday. This is Reading Camp. I have done this once before and she can read all the short A and Short I words very well. So last night we began. She began reading the short O words and has picked it up quite easily. She still seems to stop and sound out each word. I want her to get more fluid. She still needs to stop to notice what vowel is there. As I work with her I try to notice what her strengths and weaknesses are so I can work on those.

She brought the Bob Books collection I gave her sister last year, but this is the Collection 3 with compound words and long vowels. I can tell she is very motivated to read books. She is reading all the Hooked on Phonics books I have and going through that workbook. I have all my reading materials organized so we can play lots of games. She has an incredible attention span. I worked with her for 1 1/2 hours last night. She has a room with her sister M who is two years older. She wants to do everything M does. So she is greatly motivated to write and draw. Her ability to write is impressive. Many children this age are not as motivated or coordinated with those muscles but since she is, I can use that to further her reading.

Then we read to her from more advanced books. I read her one of my favorites and discovered that my book is falling apart from so many years of use. "Hats for Sale" is so delightful. Then grandpa started reading the "Fables" book to her.

Many times I have the children read lists of words or flashcards when they are at this level and that gets boring so I do several things to make it more interesting.
1. Explain the meaning of the word to them when they first read the word. Multiple meaning
words need more explanation, but what an opportunity to make their learning deeper with
more definitions.
2. Make up a sentence with the word after they have read it. If the word has more than one
meaning I try to make up sentences with all the meanings.
3. Make up a riddle before they read the word. It is fun because sometimes they think they
know the answer and start trying to read it with the first sound of the word they think it
must be. Then they see it isn't that word and have to figure it out.
4. Last night I tried to make up a story with a series of the words. It turned out to be a silly
story.
5. Have them say a sentence with the word.

I also like to show her pictures of things because she can get a better idea of what they are like if she is not familiar with them. I doubt if she knows what a cot is. I have to buy her a fig this week so she can know what that is. I love vocabulary!

I am including one of the pages I made up for her.