It is indeed a great pleasure to hear your little toddler begin speaking as they grow up from a little baby to taking their first steps. As they learn to speak and start kindergarten, it becomes quite a challenge for you to teach them vowel sounds. While consonants are quite easy for little ones to master, vowels are quite tough to understand. Teaching your child vowel sounds is one of the initial steps involved in helping your little one begin reading. Although you may find this quite a tedious task, you can sit back and relax as there are so many wonderful tips and practices that are a sure shot to help your little one master these sounds effortlessly.
- How Early do Babies Begin Vowel Sounds?
- Why Should Short Vowels be Taught First?
- 8 Simple Practices to Teach Vowel Sounds
How Early do Babies Begin Vowel Sounds?
You would have never realized that vowels are actually one of the initial sounds that come out from babies. The first ‘coo’ sounds and all other babbling that comes out from your little darling’s mouth are all vowel sounds although you may have never thought of it that way. As they reach the age of one, they begin speaking tiny words that make you proud. However, if you feel the need to actually teach them the vowel sounds as they reach kindergarten, given below are some great ideas that will help them to master these vowel sounds quite easily.
Why Should Short Vowels be Taught First?
Most people make the blunder of teaching long vowels as short vowels are quite difficult to grasp for your child. However, one needs to teach short vowels initially to your toddler. This is because it is short vowels that children come across usually, rather than long ones when they begin reading CVC words.
8 Simple Practices to Teach Vowel Sounds
Follow these simple practices to teach vowel sounds to your toddler:
1. Make Use of Visuals
It is indeed a good idea to cut out or depict visuals of each vowel which will help the little one to connect with the vowel effortlessly. Just bear in mind the fact that if you want this practice to be successful, you need to depict an object which matches perfectly with the shape of each letter. They are an excellent means to help your toddler connect quickly to the sound of that particular vowel.
2. Cards That Teach the Alphabet
Procuring cards that teach the alphabet is also quite a good means to help your little one master the vowel sounds. These teaching cards apart from inclusion of the fundamental vowel sounds add a simple activity at the rear of every card.
3. Making Use of Hand Movements
Teaching your child hand movements for each and every vowel is yet another simple trick that will help them master the vowel sounds pretty quickly. Hand motions are an ideal way to help kinesthetic and tactile learners grasp these vowel sounds rather easily.
4. Worksheets That Have Illustrations Too
Choosing some vowel worksheets that come with illustrations too are ideal to teach your little one vowel sounds more easily. The picture and letter together makes it quite simple to grasp.
5. Reading Stories
Toddlers love listening to stories no matter how any times you repeat them provided it is one of their favorite stories. So choose a simple and favorite story that your child loves and start reading stories. Once you complete the story, pick out simple and every day words and make the child them after you. Get them to repeat recognize the vowel sounds and tell them which vowel forms these words. Slowly they become quite thorough after the common words are repeated.
6. Listening for the Vowel
Say a single word at one time. And ask your child to show you the hand motion for the word you say. This will help the toddler learn the vowel quit easily and also help you to check whether he has learnt it correctly.
7. Introduce Rhyming Words
Rhyming words or word families are proven to be extremely effective in helping toddlers grasp vowel sounds quickly. If a child can say the word “cat”, all other rhyming words like mat, bat, sat and the like become very easy to spell and pronounce. This way they learn at least one vowel sound at a time and become quite thorough in it too. But remember never to introduce too many family words with different vowel sounds at one time.
8. Positioning of Mouth
Since most children find it quite a task to differentiate between the various vowel sounds that are short as they seem quite similar, ask them to pay attention to how your mouth is positioned while pronouncing the various short vowels. This also helps them greatly to grasp those short vowel sounds easily. When the sound “o” is pronounced, your mouth forms an “o” and so on.
All the above mentioned activities are sure to help you teach your child master vowel sounds without any difficulty. And remember that practice is most imperative as far as teaching anything to your little child is concerned. With ample practice and patience, they can surely grasp vowel sounds in no time.
