2nd Grade English Language Arts - Beep Bop
Need some help doing this activity?
Tips:
If you don't have paper and pen handy, you can play this game by saying words aloud and having your child listen for the vowel sound. In this version, your child practices hearing the sound rather than reading it on the page. For many children, this is less challenging, as reading instruction in kindergarten and first grade focuses heavily on phonemic awareness, or hearing individual sounds in words. By second grade, the focus is primarily on phonics, or reading words on the page and translating them into sounds.
If your child gets over-enthusiastic with the physical aspects of games like this, feel free to leave out your child bopping themselves on the head or beeping their nose. They can simply say the words beep/bop to identify the vowel sound.
Want more fun?
Was the activity too hard?
If your child struggles with this activity, provide support by reading the words aloud yourself. Tell your child to listen carefully to the vowel sound while you read. Then ask them to first identify the vowel sound, and once they've done that ask them whether it is short or long. If they still struggle, you can isolate the vowel sound for them and just ask them to identify whether that particular sound was long or short For example: "This is the word hat. When I read this word I hear the a making the /a/ sound. Is that the long or the short a sound?" (Note: A letter between slashes, like this: /a/, should be read as the sound that letter stands for).
Was the activity too easy?
Try some harder one-syllable words.
Long vowels: weight, quake, change, throat, clothes, goat, wait
Short vowels: clown, fresh, chance, cloud
Try mixing in some simple two-syllable words and have your child identify and beep-bop both vowel sounds. Here are some words you can try: amaze, include, describe, erase, skywrite, latest, Friday, arrange.
Let your child challenge you! They can either write or say words aloud with either a long or short vowel sound and ask you to identify which it is and beep/bop yourself