Try making a consonant sound, such as the "b" sound, without moving your lips. Vowel sounds are produced without closing the lips. Singing A-E-I-O-U (a variation of B-I-N-G-O) helps students distinguish vowels from consonants. In the short form ah-eh-ih-oh-ue vowels make softer sounds. In addition, the letter Y can act as a vowel and make the "E" sound at the end of a word like happy or the I sound as in fly. Also every English word must contain a vowel, so parents and teachers can have students identify vowel(s) in any written word as they read together.
Write words in which each vowel has a short vowel sound such as "ah" in cat, "eh" in pet, "ih" in hit, "o" in stop and "u" in put. Note that short vowel sounds are usually alone in each syllable of the word they are in. For example: an, pet, in, dot and put use the short letter sounds. Also pet, dot and put follow the consonant, vowel, consonant (CVC) letter pattern. Helping children identify words with this pattern is part of the Clifford Phonics Fun Activities program.
Explain long vowel sounds as the sounds that are identical to the vowel's name. For example, rain has the A sound, eat has the E sound, ice has the I sound, coat has the O sound and cute has the U sound. Long vowels have another letter (often silent) supporting it to make the same sound as the name of that letter.
Read poems, such as the ones available at BBC's Words and Pictures website, to show how the long vowel sounds are spelled. For example, the word cake follows the consonant-long vowel-consonant-silent e pattern for the long A. The same pattern is used for gene, line, note and flute. Other vowel patterns include "ai" as in rain, "ea" as in eat, "oa" as in goat and "ue" as in blue.
Use these sample words and others found in the child's reading to make a tic-tac-toe game. For example, one player writes words with a short vowel a, such as pan, and the other player writes a word with a long vowel sound such as cake. Note that the vowel sounds could use the same letter or in the case of long I and Y be different.
As students learn sounds like "I" can be spelled ight as in light or ite as in bite, they will see patterns, but not perfectly followed rules. Using vowel sound activities can make this learning fun rather than frustrating.