Teaching Vowels, part 4

Four: Gestures, An Illustration of Written Forms

In the second part of the sibling scenario that was not included above, Steiner made a connection between the vowel shape and the expressed emotion of the vowel sound.

“When we draw the shape of the sound ee, it seems to point toward what has been understood….” (Steiner, 2000, P. 69)

In the above mentioned song, we used gestures to illustrate the emotions, but they did not all necessarily illustrate the vowel form. Now conscious of wanting to make a connection between the emotion and the vowel image, I began to add to some of our actions and gradually dropped some of the old ones. For the U we began to throw our hands up into the air, when we said ‘ŭh!’ For ‘I’, we stretched whatever was icky and sticky, and pulled our hands apart until they pointed straight up and down, making the ‘I’ shape with our bodies. The letter E also evolved, but not until we began the next activity. 

Teaching Vowels, part 3

Three: Songs, An Experience of Sound

To create a ‘greater sensitivity to…vowels’, Steiner recommended that the children experience the sounds in singing, and that teachers could even ‘invent a word….so that (the children) can get an ‘overhearing’ of (the sound).” (1997, P. 185)[1]  To introduce the individual sounds, their connection to an expressed emotion, and to include humour and a game-related component, I chose the song, “I like to eat Apples and Bananas”. We sang it first with the regular words, “I like to eat, I like to eat, apples and bananas”, and then each subsequent verse was sung with all the vowels changed to one common sound. Typically, the song is sung using the long vowel sounds, but for this purpose I used the short sounds. I introduced each verse to the children by connecting each short vowel sound to an emotion, and added illustrative gestures. The short ă was the emotion of sa-a-atisfaction, ‘like when your mom sits in a hot ba-a-ath after a long day’. We laid on the floor like we were in the bath and gave a long sigh, “Ăaaah...” For the next verse, we cupped our ear like we couldn’t hear what our friend was saying and questioned, “Ěh?” The emotion was one of reaching out. Third, we pretended that we had just walked onto, and touched with our hands, something that was icky and sticky, and lifted our hands and feet saying, “Ĭ-ĭ-ĭ-ĭ!” The short Ŏ was introduced by putting our hand into a ‘pot’ in the middle of our circle, the pot was ‘hot’, and we pulled our hands back quickly, saying, “ŏ-ŏ-ŏ!” The feeling was one of surprise or shock. The last verse was a feeling of ‘ugh!’ We slumped our shoulders, ‘ŭh!’ I began to use cards with the vowels written on them to allow the children to randomly draw the next verse we would sing. This was a subtle way for them to begin to make the connection between each sound and emotion, and the image. The song was silly, and the children loved it. Once these connections were established, the children were ready to be introduced to the written forms.

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[1] See Appendix A, Section 3, under Singing to Teach Vowel Sounds for complete quote.