Flippy Dolphin

So how many of you love using the "Beanie Baby" strategies with your littles?  As a product of the '90s, I'm proud to say that I was a TY enthusiast.  Like .... HUNDREDS of beanie babies packed away in my closet because I could never bare to part with them.  (I mean c'mon ... do you know how hard it was to get my hands on that Princess Di bear?!)  Point being ... I'm loving that my little old beanie baby collection is actually serving *some* purpose in my big girl life.

One strategy that seemed particularly tough for my kids was the "Flippy Dolphin" strategy.  We practice flipping vowel sounds in isolation all the time, but when they kids got stuck on a word while reading and I said "Flip the Vowel" they looked at me like I'd grown wings.  Ultimately I came to realize that my kids were lacking the phonemic awareness skills they needed to manipulate phonemes within words.  I have quite a few awesome word lists I use for all skills on the PA continuum, including manipulating phonemes.  I decided to add to this collection by creating word lists where instead of telling the kids which sound to manipulate, I would just tell them to "flip the vowel".  This is a bit more challenging because the kids must (1) identify which sound is the vowel, (2) remember the flip of that vowel, (3) and manipulate the word.  It's super hard to think of words off the top of your head, so it's nice to have a list in front of you.

Feel free to click on the picture above if you think this is a resource your kids could use.  I can honestly say this has helped my kids TONS with their decoding skills.  They really *get* what I"m asking them to do when I tell them to flip the vowel now!