Vowels in Kindergarten

HI T.
We discovered the LeapFrog Letter Factory movie and then the game. My daughter loved each and learning was fun. What I see is every day practice is very helpful. OH we also plat Whats GNU where you make 3 lettered words. I let my daughter make up silly ones as long as she sounds it out, and makes up a definition and if it's creative enough I accept it. She's learned to spell and reading with the top of her class. But I I talk about how much I love reading, volunteer in her class, get excited about her homework saying what fun it looks, and play all those games with her. She also started writing letters to a friend out of state. Spellings not supposed to be perfect just sounded out. In her class I see a wide range of skill sets. Some kids are still doing letter recognition, some are learning to read. And her teacher sends home weekly letter with updates on what there working on so the parents can support there efforts. So if that's not offered ask...
Good luck, AmyH

My son is in kindergarten, and they have gone through vowels. They do letter books each week focusing on a new letter and words that go with that letter. Not all schools are the same, but I know he's doing things way before I did when I was growing up. =)

Some of the children in the kindergarten class that I work in know their vowels, some do not. Some can read, some do not. The more that you work at home with your daughter, the stronger student she will become.

Have fun!

S.

Maybe she is just unsure of which vowel sound to make... the long sound or the short sound? This can be confusing for a young child to understand. You should work with her on it. She should've already learned that in K.

My daughter is in a young 5's program with Kindergarten next year (due to a winter birthday). They learn the letters through a program called sound box, but the teacher specifically said they do vowels last because of all the differnt ways they can sound. I would just ask the teacher about it, and work on it at home.

If they are expecting children to read then vowels should have been taught. My 5 year old has trouble with combo sounds, and sometimes vowels can be tricky because their sounds changes and are sometimes silent... Keep practicing or discuss with her teacher, maybe she can get a little extra help.

T.,
It's too hard to say anymore when the vowels and consenants are learned. The educational system keeps changing things on the teachers, and kids learn things at lower and lower ages than you and I did.

I'm almost 55 and honestly can't recall exactly when the vowels were learned. definitely not in kindergarten. It was after that. I'm surprised it's still part of the cirriculum tho because they've just about eliminated spelling, punctuation, grammer, synonyms/homonyms,antinyms understanding, and more. Kids don't know these things. My youngest is in the air force and I see spelling errors in every letter.
So I wouldn't worry about it now. See what they are teaching in the school you'll be connected with. Fill in the blanks where you can.

My daughter is currently in kindergarten, and they are learning the vowels, but I still work with her at home as to when an A says Ay and not Ah, etc. I'm sure your daughter will catch on as you work with her more.

I was talking w/ my sons kindergarten teacher and she said I should expect him to skip the vowels at this point. She gave me the example of target - to him he would sound out trgt and that the rest will come.

I would hope they would learn vowels in Kindgergarten. My son is almost 5 and attends preschool. He knows all of his letter sounds, can write all his letters and several small words. He has been able to do all of this since about 4ish. If your daugther is having problems, I would suggest the Leap Front Letter Factory CD-- it is awesome. My son knew all his letter sounds in about a week.

T.,
I am a former kindergarten teacher and a mother of a 1st grader. Children do not really learn the vowel sounds until 1st grade. K-teachers may touch on it toward the end of the school year, but first grade is when she will learn them.
The best thing you can do with your child is to read to her every day. Let her read to you if she can, that's great. Keep making reading a fun experience. Her love for reading will continue thoughout her life.

I have a 4th grader and a 1st grader and am currently subbing at the elementary school. They are teaching letter sounds in Kinder, along with vowel sounds. What seems to help is when they say short "A" says aaahh, they put their fingers around their mouth to sort of feel the sound per se. In the short "u", they say "uuu" and give a thumbs "UP" which goes with the sound up. It sort of helps differentiate the sounds.

Yes they should. You can check the state content standards at http://www.michigan.gov/mde. You can look at curriculum and instruction. This will show you what they should be learning in each subject in each grade. She may be having a hard time with the short vowel sounds, these can be very diffigult to learn.

Hi,
I'm a nanny of 3 children 6, 4, and 1 year. These kids come from a very privigled family and have been going to some type of school since they were 2yrs. The teachers at these schools work with all of the letters at 4 years and are recognizing and sounding each letter. The oldest is in 1st grade and most of his classmates read in kindergarten. He is extremely good at math and there fore teaching him to read has been slow.
Stay with it and start with a teaching the letter, the letter sounds and capital and lower case. Do one letter a week and include this with the reading time. It will come! Kids are learning at such a fast rate these days, I can remember when we didn't learn to read until 2nd grade! Of course, in this fast paced world that can't happen now but it will all come together for you and her.
A.

My 5 year old daughter is learning all letter sounds in kindergarten and there is a special poster with all the vowels on it. They are taught just like every other letter. Our school uses a zoo phonics program where every letter makes a sound and has an animal associated to it, Ally Alligater says "ah" type of thing. I would talk to her teacher and see if they were, or are going to be, taught. If they aren't then I would find out why. If they were, find out if she knows them at school, but "doesn't" at home. My daughters kindergarten seems to be teaching a lot more then what I ever learned (there are some things that I didn't learn until later - like the 7 continents and how to find Michigan on a map), so it may be a good comparison. However, vowels are a huge part of our language.

I agree with one of the other posts... check your library for LeapFrog Letter Factory. We have bought all of them and it is AMAZING how fast my 4 1/2 year old AND my 2 year old learned the letters (and their sounds). We are now watching the 3rd (I think)DVD, that teaches the silent E -- it talks about the "other" sound that the vowels make and why. It is worth the $8 a DVD if you buy them but some of them are at the library so you can see if your daughter would like them or not. Good luck!!

I agree that Leapfrog Letter Factory DVD is thee best. My older kids used it years ago and my 1 year old will use it too. I have always recommended it to everyone I know.

It is the best learn-to-read tool because the song is something they will sing all day and in that song, every letter is a character and the sound it makes has everything to do with that character (ex. the e is an "old man" e that says "eh?" as he can't hear so well, and the o swings through the jungle like tarzan singing "ahhah" just like the sound an o makes). It is so cute and catchy that your daughter will always have the images/sounds in her head. There is also a great vowel song in there that teaches all the vowels with a catchy little song too (I still sing it to myself sometimes when someone brings up 'vowels'...I can't help it).
Once she has watched the video (if you have a dvd player in the car, it is a great video to have in there---I bought two for that reason), Leapfrog has/had a great refrigerator magnet game that has all the letters of the alphabet and a receptacle for 3 letters at a time to spell simple words cat, hat, fat, mop, top, hop, etc. Buy the video and the magnet game together and she will know how to read overnight! And your 3.5 year old can use it next (actually, she will probably start understanding her letters/spelling sooner than you will believe).
It's a great tool.

My 1st grader learned vowel sounds at the end of kindergarten. The reason they don't teach them right away is because they each have more then one sound....long and short, it's a hard concept for kindergartners. They concentrate on learning the one sound letters and once they have that down they start the vowels.
They really focus h*** o* the vowel sounds in the first marking period of 1st grade.