Vowels Worksheets: a e i o u Short Vowel Sounds

Vowels a e i o u worksheets with short vowel sound words: circle the vowels, sort words by vowel, then change the vowel to make a new word. Free PDF.

20 sheets: circle the vowels, one short vowel a sheet, find, sort, change and count vowels, answers

These vowels a e i o u worksheets build to sheets 15 to 18, where hat becomes hot and pin becomes pan. Changing one letter in the middle and getting a different word is the clearest proof a child can have that the vowel is doing real work, and the middle sound is the hardest position in a word to hear.

Circle the vowels worksheet, find a e i o u among the consonants — Sheet 1 – pick the five vowels out of the alphabet.

What is in the 22 pages

Sheet 1: pick the five vowels out of the alphabet.
Sheets 2-6: one short vowel a sheet, a as in apple through u as in umbrella.
Sheets 7-10: which vowel is in the word.
Sheets 11-14: sort the sound words into columns by their vowel.
Sheets 15-18: change the vowel, make a new word.
Sheets 19-20: how many vowels in a word.
Last page: every answer, sheet by sheet.

Short sounds only, and why

Every word in this book is a short vowel sound word: cat, hat and pan for a, bed for e, pin and pig for i, hot, top and dog for o, cup and bus for u. No cake, no bike, no rope. Long vowels follow different rules that need a second letter to explain them, and mixing the two is the fastest way to convince a child that English spelling is arbitrary. One sound per letter, held to for twenty sheets, and the long sounds become a new rule rather than a contradiction.

Short a vowel sound worksheet, short a words as in apple — Sheet 2 – eight short a words to copy.

Sorting is harder than finding

Sheets 7-10 ask which vowel is in one word. Sheets 11-14 give a pile of words and ask the child to put each one in the right column. The second needs the sound held in mind while comparing across words, which is a step up, and it is where a child who has been recognising spellings rather than hearing sounds comes unstuck.

Minimal pairs, on sheets 15 to 18

hat and hot differ by one letter and mean entirely different things. Working through those four sheets out loud is worth more than reading them silently, because the whole exercise is about the ear. If a child reads both as the same word, that is the finding, and the single-vowel sheets 2 to 6 are where to go back to.

Change the vowel to make a new word, short vowel sounds worksheet — Sheet 15 – hat becomes hot when a changes to o.

Ages 4 to 6

This fits after letter sounds are known and alongside early reading. CVC words reading worksheets put these vowels into whole words to read, phonics worksheets for kindergarten cover the same five vowels with blending and sound boxes, and rhyming words worksheets work the ending rather than the middle.

Printing this one correctly

In your printer dialog set Scale to 100% or Actual size, not Fit to page. Fit to page shrinks the tracing letters and they stop matching the size a child's hand is learning.

Plain paper is fine for crayons and pencils. If your child uses felt pens, 100 gsm paper stops the ink bleeding to the next sheet.