Vowel Teams for Kindergarten

February 7, 2023
Literacy

What is a vowel team? Vowel teams consist of two vowels next to each other in a word. Each vowel team comes together to create one sound. Vowel team rules can vary, but the most common rule is when two vowels are next to each other; the first one says its name and the second one is silent.

Examples

Some examples of common vowel teams, also called vowel pairs, are:

There are more than this, but these are some of the most common teams. All of these examples have two vowels, but make only one sound. Keep reading for a list of words with long vowel teams.

Vowel Team Words

This list of vowel teams contains the long vowel teams we teach in kindergarten. You will see some words with ay or ey. These are considered vowel teams because the y is acting like a vowel in these words. We offer these vowel posters as a free resource.

How to Teach Vowel Teams

In kindergarten, we spend about a week on each long vowel sound. In that week we introduce that letter’s long sounds including the vowel teams. We always start off with this chant, “When two vowels go walking, the first one does the talking.” Then we show them one of the videos from the paragraph below. Next we look at the specific team we are introducing. Example: for ai, we would say, “If ai are walking, who’s doing the talking?…..That’s right we hear the long a and we don’t hear the i.” We write words on the board with the vowel team ai (rain, tail, paint, chain, snail) and we sound them out together. Last, we give them an ai worksheet so they can practice what we have learned. After this lesson, anytime we see one of the vowel teams we’ve taught, we point them out and ask our students what we know about vowel teams.

Vowel Team Videos

Our favorite video is Between the Lions: When Two Vowels Go Walking. Our kids always get a kick of these cute letters.

And, of course, we can never leave Jack Hartman out, our go to for any great kindergarten video: When Two Vowels Go Walking.

Worksheets with Vowel Team Practice

Our Long Vowel worksheets have practice with 9 vowel teams; ai, ay, ee, ea, ey, ie, oa, ue, and ui. Because we are kindergarten teachers, we do not teach all of the vowel teams. We introduce vowel teams. Students learn the rest of the teams in first and second grade.

More Long Vowel Resources

Looking for other resources that cover long vowel practice? Read our overview of long vowels or for an in depth look at each vowel, check out our Long A, Long E, Long I, Long O and Long U blog posts. We explain exactly how to teach these long vowels with great tips and resources.