Vowel Hop - Active Learning for the Beginner Reader

When I was an early elementary ESL teacher working at an international school in Malaysia, our school was all about active learning. 🏃🤸‍♀️🤾 Active learning is literally what the name denotes - that kids learn better when they learn it in an

active manner - whether that would be something as simple as incorporating a ball toss during a spelling lesson or getting older kids to move around the room asking and answering questions with their classmates.⠀⠀⠀

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I no longer teach in a school, but I try my best to incorporate some moving-

around-learning with the activities I do with N. This was an active learning activity I did with her when she was younger, and honestly, you can tweak this any way you want to for whatever you're studying. It's super easy to resort using sit-down worksheet activities with her, (because lazy, scraping-by mom is real🙇), but, really, who looks forward to that? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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SUPPLIES:⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
5 pieces of cardboard & 1 vowel written on each⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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At the time of this picture, N knew all her vowels but was learning how to identify the sounds of vowels within simple words. We started with me calling out a short vowel sound and her hopping to it, then progressed to me saying words with the short vowel sounds and she had to hop to the correct letter. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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OTHER GAME IDEAS:

• Switch it up and do long vowel sounds, magic/silent E words, etc...
• Tape the vowels on the wall and throw a soft ball to it or use a wand, special stick, fly swatter, etc... for them to select the correct vowel.
• Create an obstacle course with the vowels taped around the room, and have them go through the obstacle course before selecting the correct vowel. We like to incorporate using couch cushions, balls, an indoor play side, or chairs to jump off of, climb on, etc... before they proceed to showing off their answer. 
• Do musical chairs with a vowel on each chair. They have to give a word that contains the vowel from the chair they sat down on.
• Create a variety of 3-letter words on paper cut-outs.  Have the vowels taped up around the room. Read out the word to your child and then have them match the word to the correct vowel. Have them create piles of collected words in front of each vowel.
  
• Go outside!! Write the vowels with chalk on the ground. Have them do the same activity, but outside! Use different colors, different hopping patterns, etc...to make it like a game.

Seriously, anything that makes learning like a game will provide them an enormous amount of practice without them even knowing it! Try adding some jazz to their learning today!

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