Vowels & Consonants Worksheets: FREE Printables!
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Use these FREE printable Vowels & Consonants Sorting Worksheets to help kids understand, recognize, and practice the important differences between vowels and consonants.
About Vowels and Consonants
All 44 sounds in the English language can be categorized as either vowels or consonants.
It’s important to know that vowels and consonants are sounds, not letters. So when we use the terms “vowel” or “consonant” by themselves, we are referring to a sound (phoneme).
The terms “vowel letter” or “consonant letter” refer to the actual letters (graphemes) that represent a vowel or consonant sound.
Examples:
- /m/ is a consonant sound. The written letter “M” or “m” is a consonant letter.
- /ā/ is a vowel sound. The written letter “A” or “a” is a vowel letter.
This may seem very technical, but making this simple change in our verbiage will help students truly understand that vowels and consonants are sounds!
💡 More Info & Learning: To dig deeper into these terms and concepts, visit our informative post to learn all about vowels and consonants (👈🏼 here 👉🏼) and phonemes and graphemes.
Important Teaching Info
Students need a basic understanding of what makes a vowel a vowel and a consonant a consonant. We recommend teaching or refreshing this information before using the worksheet:
- A vowel is a sound made when the jaw drops, where no part of the tongue, teeth, throat, or lips block or slow down the sound. A vowel sound can be stretched out, sung, or yelled for as long as a person has breath.
Try it with the short /ŭ/ vowel sound. - A consonant is a sound made where some part of the mouth, either the tongue, teeth, lips, or throat, blocks or slows down the sound.
Try it with a few sounds: /p/, /r/, /d/ /ch/. What part of the mouth do you feel obstructing the sound?
After teaching this essential information, give kids lots of modeling and practice “testing out” sounds.
Instead of memorizing a list of vowel letters and consonant letters, kids can learn to put the sound to the test. They should make the sound and ask themselves:
- Is anything blocking or slowing down the sound?
- Does my jaw drop?
- Can I sing, yell, or say the sound without anything slowing it down?
These questions will help kids deeply understand and process the difference between vowels and consonants.
This is especially helpful as new sounds are introduced, such as the long o sound spelled OW. Kids can make the sound and understand that the W part of a vowel team, based on its sound.
We love having kids do this because it’s a multisensory way to explore the foundational concepts!
Using the Worksheets
These practice worksheets (download them below!) are intentionally designed to promote the proper understanding of vowels and consonants.
Since vowels and consonants are sounds, we made a picture sort. Use the vowel and consonant sorting worksheet like this:
- Be sure kids have all materials: a pencil, scissors, and a glue stick.
- Review all the pictures with kids. This is helpful for some words that might be easily confused. For example, is it a picture of an alligator or crocodile?
- Independently, kids will say the word and isolate the first sound in the word. This is another essential phonemic awareness skill.
- Last, they “put the sound to the test” to determine whether it is a vowel or consonant sound. They sort the picture into the correct column based on whether they hear a vowel or consonant.
Pictures include: Igloo, Watermelon, Octopus, Volcano, Ring, Umbrella, Saw, Egg, Bat, Alligator, Zebra, Nose.
Recommended Resources
👆🏼Upgrade available: Get the Vowels and Consonants Practice resource for TONS of practice!! 👆🏼
It includes 29 pages of picture sorts, letter sorts, and other targeted activities, and it includes teaching instructions!
More helpful resources:
Download & Print
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