Hi everyone, I hope someone can help! My four year old knows all the letters of the alphabet and their sounds, he can read three letter words with all the vowels and he can sound out any word that has short vowels. My question is what do I do now? The fact that “a” in bat makes a different sound than “a” in bate is very confusing… How do I smooth him into long vowels? Thank you!!!
Long vowels say their names.
Cow says moo. And it’s name is cow.
A says /a/. And it’s name is A. Use lots of fun examples. Make it silly.
E is a magic E. When I was in school my teacher used to draw a magicians top hat above magic E. Oddly i can still remember that. E Is able to make vowels say there own name.
I also like to use this little ditty. “When 2 vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.”
This works for vowel combinations such as “ea” “oa” etc. You can also use it for the words like cake, but it would be stylized as “a_e”.
You can also help him identify words with long vowel sounds by putting a line above all the long vowels. Also you can have him put a dot above short vowels.
Thank you Korrale, that does help a bit, as far as I´m concerned it´s a science. I first learned to read in Czech, which is quite simple as far as the reading goes, because all the letters have only one sound and you read exactly what you see. English is much more complicated… Well, anybody else any other tips?
By the way, what about the magic E and the word “come”? Thanks
Words that don’t follow phonics rules are often called outlaw words. And they just have to be memorised. Some people consider them sight words. But in reality many of the sight words follow phonetic rules.
I would do an Internet search for either sight word or fry word lists. The lists overlap, and they both cover high frequency words that should be recognised by sight because they make up a high percentage of the reading material in the early grades. Knowing these words, without having to sound out the ones that are phonetic, or trying to sound out the ones that aren’t will increase fluency.
The link below is full of phonics rules. Maybe it will help. English really can be quite tricky.
This link of phonics/spelling rules might be a bit easier to follow. It has a lot more examples.
hello Bebita , i think by telling the baby more or involving the baby in games and other activities may do the trick. 
They will get it in time
You can try out some game sites which are educational for the kids.
Try
http://www.starfall.com/n/matching/long-vowels/set.htm?v=11.10
and you can also give a try to
Goodluck
My first recommendation is readingbear,org. If you want to do this on the cheap it is mostly all you need. Now for the rest:
Vowels are the the sticky letters that hold the words together: a, e, i , o, u and sometimes y. When two vowels go walking the the first one does the talking and when it talks it says its name like : ai in wait, and oa in boat. and ay in way. (This is not always true, but for our purposes it is true now. Exceptions are weigh, height, wear and there are a bunch of others.)
You can make cvc words and then you have something called a silent “e” attachment. So you can take the word hop and make it hope by attaching a silent “e”.
You can do this for a little while but at some point you are just going to have to teach the phonograms. There is a wonderful book called “The ABC’s and All Their Tricks”. It’s all you need to teach phonics if your child can read CVC words. You just go through it. However, you can also go to http://www.donpotter.net/education_pages/ you will find a TON of resources there. You can find a book you like and use that. They are all free. The Flesch exercises are part of the book “Why Johnny Can’t Read”. If you look at his list he gives all the blends and phonograms and the rules for using them like when making the “k” sound k goes with i and e and c goes with the other 3.
I have a phonogram tiles file in the downloads area http://library.brillkids.com/download.php?cid=8&tid=&lid=139&fid=9146. I used spray adhesive to attach them onto a magnet sheet and then sprayed the top with fast drying polyurethane. We use readingbear.org and go through the words there which follow the flesch exercises. Then we use our phonogram tiles to make more words following the rules we just went over - put the tile magnets on a cookie sheet you will not be sorry. Reading Bear does not give you the rules it just teaches the child to sound out the particular phonogram. You don’t need to know all the rules and exceptions, but it helps later especially if you are teaching spelling. Kids will learn all this organically as you expose them to it.
I started by teaching my daughter that the phonetic letters a, e, i, o and u could say their names too and then I taught her the names for A E I O and U. Once she knew these I moved to teaching the rule of the silent E - words such as rate, Pete, bite, Rome, huge by making her sound them out and change the vowel sound to its name when she reached the E. Then I followed other lessons from the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading which introduces most phonics sounds. The silent E has about 5 other uses other than changing the vowel sound to its name but these can be dealt with as you come to them.
I started teaching vowels with fun examples, and names. one she find out the vowels than i moved into the games.