Phonics, Spelling, & Grammar Resources

If you need vowel sounds phonics activities you’re in the right place. Start downloading our amazing hands-on phonics activities, printables, worksheets, games and more to get you started with short & long vowel sounds. Our Phonics activities are designed to help beginning readers make learning to connect letters and sounds easy and FUN!

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When we think about vowels we often think of the 5 vowels, A, E, I, O, and U which we teach as initial sounds. But when it comes to teaching phonics and vowel sounds the focus is on short and long vowel sounds and the huge, and confusing, range of different spellings associated with each one. 

A good place to start when teaching vowel sounds to your students is to explain the difference between vowels and consonants.  And while most consonant sounds come easily to kids, vowel sounds are a different story.

The main difference between vowels and consonants is that:

• a vowel is a sound made by blowing air out of the mouth without closing your mouth or teeth.
• a consonant is a sound made by moving part of the mouth, lips, tongue, or teeth. 

For example, get your students to compare what happens when they say a vowel and compare the movements when they say a consonant.

• So if they said “e” their mouth, tongue, teeth, and lips did not move.
• But when they say “b.” they briefly closed their lips.

So kids find vowel sounds tricky because they cannot “feel” them as much in the mouth compared to most of the consonant sounds. 

To complicate things further Students also need to know that there are types of vowel sounds; short vowels & long vowels

• long vowels sound the same as the letter names, for example, the a in able.
• short vowels can be a challenge because many of them sound similar to each other, for example, the i in pig sounds very similar to the short e in peg.

And if this isn’t confusing enough there are many different spellings associated with each vowel sound! 

To help students with these confusions we have created lots of vowel sounds phonics activities to encourage lots of practice & review. Click the images to try these hands-on activities, games and printables in your literacy centres.