Contributor: Jessica Buch. Lesson ID: 10119
What do grapes, apes, and bats have in common that dogs don't? Using a fun game and your favorite story, learn about the different sounds that vowels have. Today's guest vowel is the letter "A"!
Do you know that sometimes vowels have more than one sound? Today we will look at the letter "A." Do you have a letter "A" in your name? What does the letter "A" look like? Can you draw one in the air? Today, we'll see that sometimes A sounds like "apple," and other times it sounds like "ape."
Print and cut out the pictures on the Picture Sort for Long and Short a sheet in Downloadable Resources in the right-hand sidebar.
What is in the pictures?
1. Find the picture of the bat. Which sound do you hear in "bat"?
That's the short /a/. Nice job!
2. Now, find the picture of the grapes.
That's the long /a/ sound! Remember: long /a/ always says his name: Grapes.
3. Take a look at some of the other pictures. What sounds do you hear, long /a/ or short /a/?
4. Sort the pictures by short /a/ and long /a/. Now, some words will be oddballs. That means that they don't sound like short /a/ or long /a/. For example, look at the picture of the dog. Does that have the short or long /a/ sound? It doesn't have either sound, does it? "Dog" is an oddball!
5. Put the oddballs all together.
Continue on to the Got It? section to practice some more picture sorting!