Ice Cream Short Vowel Sounds Game for Preschoolers

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Lately in homeschooling we have been working on our short vowel sounds. There is a ton of repetition involved to help these sounds sink in (that’s how the little ones learn!) and I try to take every opportunity to make the experience fun as well as educational.

Today I have a great short vowels sounds printable in the form of ice cream! These work great for stacking the items on top of each other!

The printable has 3 learning levels. The first is the actual aeiou letters. match the lower case and upper case on the cone bases. The 2nd level has beginning sounds pictures, these you add on top of the 1st level. The 3rd and last level is a listening skill, here the image word is said and children have to listen for the vowel sound to match it up to the correct ice cream cone.

What is a short vowel sound?

Simply put a short vowel sound is in words such as cat, bed, sit, top and sun. When you say those words you can hear the sounds of the a e i o u. The long vowel sound is in words like table, sheep, bike, nose, music. Do you hear the difference?

Our 2nd level short vowel activity has the following images:

A – says a as in apple, ant, alligator

E – says e as in elephant, elf, envelope

I – says i as in insect, indian, itchy

O – says o as in ostrich, otter, olive

U – says u as in umbrella, umpire, upside down bat

Each of these picture cards use the single “short” beginning sounds of aeiou.

The 3rd level has words that contain short vowel sounds in them. Here children will have to listen to the word to sort them out into aeiou.

The words in this 3rd level of short vowel sounds are:

A – cat, bat, hat

E – kettle, tent, web

I – hippo, fish, mittens

O – dog, sock, rocket

U – pumpkin, duck, sun

This game is awesome to pull out once or even twice a week. My kids love anything ice cream themed so these are great for grabbing their attention. I have these in our busy bag collection as well. My younger kids only do up to level 2 and my older ones complete level 3.

Tip: Mark the back of the ice cream scoops with pencil for which level the images are. This will help you keep track of each level if you have need to separate them for different age groups.

If you are using all 3 levels of this game you can also add the extra challenge of having the ice cream scoops all together. This means that the child is getting a mix of words with beginning sounds as well as words with vowel sounds.