To be honest, this is where I've spent most of my intervention time...short vowel sounds. With COVID, I discovered some of my Littles missed that skill when we were on lockdown. It's okay. It happens. We just need to work a little harder on mastering our short vowels. You may also want to check out the March page for a little Short Vowel March Madness fun!

Some of these resources are not my original work. If I found a resource off Teachers Pay Teachers, I will add the direct link to the resource.

If you have any questions about an activity, or need to bounce an idea off on someone, shoot me an email at apocketfullofresources@gmail.com

Until the next time,

Short Vowel Energize

I got the idea of this game from a Teach Your Heart Out virtual conference I attended last year. The idea of this game is to set a timer for X amount of seconds - I did 20 seconds - during which they are doing an exercise. Once the 20 seconds is up, have students come up with as many short /a/ words as possible. Then repeat with each vowel sound. As you can see from the pictures, this was a very early session. Most of the words begin with the short /a/ sound instead of having it as the middle sound. It was after this game I realized I had my work cut out for me and needed to start from scratch.

Vowel Family Ring Toss

I picked up this ring toss off Amazon. I will link it below. For this game, I wrote on cones with a dry erase marker different word family endings. For example, -at and -an. Then, on the rings, I added a piece of masking tape with different consonants on each ring. I purposely made some consonants for nonsense words because I feel it's important for students to learn if they are making an actual word. I was working with three Littles on this game, so they each had two different color rings. They took turns trying to ring each cone. If they did, they had to head over to my dry erase table and write the word they made under the correct word family heading. After everyone tossed all their rings, we rotated ring colors and kept going. Once all of my Littles had every color, they read the different words they created and had to tell me if they were real or nonsense words. This was a great game! My Littles had fun and started getting the hang of short vowels.

Ring Toss

Vowel Family Bean Bag Toss

The bean bag toss has the same concept as the ring toss, but I added more word family endings with this one. One thing I always make my students do when working with building words is write them out. I find this helps them see the words put together and not just in pieces. I wish I had a link for the bean bags, but I made them. I took beans I had from an old sensory table, felt, and iron-on dry erase paper. I wish I remembered where I found it, but I can tell you, it was a lucky find! I had the idea in my head, but searched forever to find the iron-on dry erase paper. I have used these for so many games, and my kiddos love them!

Crazy Vowels

Make sure you check out the month pages for more Short Vowel games! I have some games specific to different months and holidays!