After reading our 2 year old son a large number of ABC books and watching numerous ABC/”Phonics” videos on YouTube, my husband and I knew that we had to make one of our own. Rather than making a traditional ABC book, we wanted to make a book that actually teaches some phonics to the little ones.
We have created a phonics coloring book where each page is a different sound in the Mountain West dialect of the English language, using the International Phonetic Alphabet. Did you know that the letters we use are not a one-to-one correspondence for the sounds that we make? In fact, it gets quite messy and jumbled in the vowels. We use 16 different vowels when we talk, but we only use 5-6 different symbols to write those vowels.
Here is a link to the pdf version: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rGG8x6zLVjya5ubhsJU6FFxblodbY5VF/view?usp=sharing. Print it out; be sure to print it flipping on the short side if you print on both sides of the paper. Fold the pages in half and staple in the middle of the pages. Then you or your little one can color the pages while you talk about the sounds.
This coloring book is based on our Mountain West dialect. Your dialect may be different, so here is the Word document: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1i58bZGCMu9JpEdW7fQvk1xrG65NnLL8L/view?usp=sharing. You may download the Word document and edit it to better match your own dialect if you so choose.
We failed to distinguish certain obscure sounds such as on page 15 and page 18.
You may need to update the following pages based on your dialect:
- page 23 – if you pronounce wine and whine differently
- page 28 – if you pronounce caught and cot differently, or if you pronounce the vowels in father and bother differently, or if you pronounce the vowels in cloth and thought differently
- page 29 – if you pronounce horse and hoarse differently
- page 30 – if you pronounce the vowels in trap and bath differently
The letter “r” makes things complicated. Some dialects pronounce it and some dialects don’t pronounce it and it is often word dependent. Sometimes r changes the vowels before it and sometimes it doesn’t. Depending on your dialect, you may need to add pages for vowels followed by r.
This book is not comprehensive. There are additional uncommon ways to spell these sounds that are not listed in the book.
We are sharing this book with you. We hope you and your little ones enjoy it.
Math Art Mom 