Build-a-Flower – FREE Printable R-Controlled Vowels Activity

If your kindergarten, first grade, or 2nd grader is working on r-controlled vowel, you will love this sorting game to learn the ar, er, ir, or, and ur sounds. First let us tell you what are r-controlled vowels. Then we will practice identifying the sound with a cute flower r-controlled activity. Simply grab the free flower template printable and you are ready to play and learn to read and spell!

R-controlled vowels

This r-controlled vowel sort is perfect for saying and matching sounds without having to read. When working with a child with learning delays, you learn the importance of review. You quickly realize that just because it has been “learned” once, it will always be learned. And this month, both her speech teacher and her reading teacher noticed that she was struggling with making and reading the r sounds. It often amazes me that what she struggles to say, she often struggles to read.

Though we have done many, many r-controlled activities in the past, she was struggling to remember which sounds these letters make and even pronounce them.I wanted to create an activity that would take the reading out of it, but force her to say these r-controlled vowel sounds over and over, and match them to just two letters. This is where the r-controlled vowel sort came in.

r-controlled printables

Start by scrolling to the bottom of the post, under the terms of use, and click on the text link that says >> _____ <<. The pdf file will open in a new window for you to save the freebie template.

What are r-controlled vowels?

R-controlled vowels or sometimes known as the bossy r, are syllable types where the vowel sound is not heard. The vowel will be followed by a “r”, and it will not make the short vowel sound or the long vowel sound. You really only hear the r sound.

There are five different r-controlled vowel sounds, with three of them making the same sound.

• ar – makes the sound you hear in car. Other words that have this sound are farm, far, farm, shark, yard, card, cart, park, and chart
• or – is the next one. I think this is an easy one since most children recognize the word or, and will use that sound when they see it in words. You can see these two letters in words like cork, fort, north, horn, stork, storm, sword, thorn, and torch.

Then we jump into the three that sound the same. They all make the sound that you hear in the word her.

• er – Though there aren’t rules that tell us when to use which r-controlled vowel, we do use “er” at the end of an adjective when comparing two things. But a basic list of words that have “er” in them are clerk, fern, germ, her, perch, serve, stern, swerve, and tern.
• ir – Next, we move to “ir”. You can see this in words like bird, birthday, dirt, shirt, skirt, smirk, squirt, twirl, and stir.
• ur – Finally, we have the “ur”. It can be seen in burger, church, curls, curtain, hurt, nurse, purse, surf, and turtle.

r-controlled vowel activity

Grab some scissors, and before long you will have an activity you can use over and over again.

1. First, print off the pages or sounds you want to work on. I recommend using card stock paper for more durability.
2. Second, cut out the stems and the pictures that go with the stem
3. Finally, laminate for added use time, and you are ready to go.

R-Controlled Vowel Sort

Now it is time to play with these sounds. I recommend not doing the “er”, “ur”, or “ir” at the same time unless you want to focus on spelling. Since my goal was to work on the sounds of the r-controlled vowels, I didn’t want to add that factor to it.

First, I put out three stems. We practiced saying the sounds of each flower.

Next, I handed her a petal. I would say the name of the picture and have her repeat the word after me. This allowed us to get in some speech practice with her hearing me model it and then allowing her to imitate me.

Then we would say the sounds of each of the r-controlled vowels, and she would decide where to place the petal.

r-controlled vowel game

Sometimes, I would have to say the name of the picture and emphasize the r-controlled vowel sound to help her hear the sound and find the match.

By the time all the petals were placed on the flowers, we had lots of speech practice and lots of opportunity to practice what each sound the r-controlled vowels made.

The r-controlled vowel sort was a fun, laid-back activity that packed a big punch.

r controlled words

The r controlled words in this phonics activity are:

• ar – farm, far, farm, shark, yard, card, cart, park, chart
• er – clerk, fern, germ, her, perch, serve, stern, swerve, tern
• ir – bird, birthday, dirt, shirt, skirt, smirk, squirt, twirl, stir
• or – cork, fort, north, horn, stork, storm, sword, thorn, torch
• ur – burger, church, curls, curtain, hurt, nurse, purse, surf, turtle