16 Secret Long Vowel Sentences for Summer

Looking for a fun long vowel activity for kids?  These secret summer sentences give kids plenty of practice reading and writing words with long vowels including -ay, -ee, -igh and -oa.

Children will love solving the mystery words and you’ll love that they’re getting lots of long vowel pattern practice.  For more vowel practice, check out our Vowel Team Centers  to get your students more practice with vowels!

Getting Ready

Prepping for this long vowel activity is quick and easy. Simply print out the 3 summer sentence pages, cut along the dotted lines and staple them together into an extremely narrow book.

Long Vowel Sentence Activity

Look at the long vowel sounds in each summer picture at the top of the printable. Can your child pronounce them? If they’re not sure, do a quick review before jumping into the activity:

1. Try and read the sentence before substituting the long vowels. Can they guess what vowels should be there?
2. Write the correct long vowels onto each picture to create the sentences and then read them.

Making Silly Sentences

A fun extension to this long vowel activity is to switch out the long vowels, intentionally creating silly words. For example, instead of:

The Queen likes coffee and toast.

Switch the vowels so it says

The Quighn likes coffew and tayst.

Experiment with the vowels to make the funniest sentences possible. Do any of the new words sound like real words?

The more children manipulate and play with the long vowels, the more ingrained those sounds (and their spelling) will be. Research tells us that kids have much higher memory recall when they’re happy as they learn, so the more fun they have with it the better!

Long Vowel Activity Extended Learning

Children can write out their favorite sentences or create new ones for their friends to discover. They can choose their own long vowel, or a short vowel to make it simpler, and substitute that vowel for a drawing of a flower or car. Can their friend decipher the new sentence?

More Fun

For more literacy fun, check out our Vowel Team Centers in our shop!