Learning short vowel sounds is an important step for beginning readers.
The most common patterns with short vowel sounds are CVC and VC.
The V stands for vowel and the C stands for consonant.
Starfall has free access to some books with animation and sound. If you move the mouse over the pictures you'll find spots to click. There will be an action that will help keep a child interested in reading the stories over and over. There are five books that focus on short vowel sounds. The free online versions allows a reader to click on a word for help if needed.
Here's one of the books I ordered from Starfall.
CVC: Zac, rat
VC: is
CVC: Zac, sat, can
VC: on
CVC: ran, jam
VC: ants
You can purchase a boxed set with Zac the Rat. The set includes 15 books.
You can find this set with short vowel sounds and some high frequency words in Starfall's online store.
My favorite resource books to teach phonic skills to children are Phonic Pathways: Clear Steps to Easy Reading and Perfect Spelling
and Phonic Pathways: Simple Exercises to Improve Reading Fluency
. I've used them with my own children and students I tutor from my home.Here are some pages from Phonic Pathways: Clear Steps to Easy Reading and Perfect Spelling that teach short vowel sounds.
I copied this page onto heavy paper to make a bookmark. This is a great tool to help readers remember short vowel sounds. (a - ant, e - exercise, i - itch, o - octopus, u - umbrella)
I like how a reader is taught to blend from beginning to end. Teaching a reader to blend to the vowel instead of stopping after the first consonant sound is called body-coda blending. The hyphen between letters in this book indicate a reader pause.
Phonics Pathways Boosters includes a 35 minute CD to demonstrate the individual sounds letters and letter groups make. It is sometime difficult even for adults to hear and make separate sounds in words.
