Short Vowel U Worksheet

Short u is the vowel sound children hear in the middle of mug, tub and run, and it is the one first graders mix up most often — it sits so close to short o that cup and cop can sound like the same word to a new reader. This short vowel u worksheet works the sound from both directions on one page: first the child hears it inside a picture name, then she reads it inside a real sentence and writes it herself.

Part A shows six pictures — a truck, a mug, a fan, a hat, a ring and a tub — and asks your child to say each name out loud and circle the three that carry the short u sound. Saying the name aloud is the whole exercise; a child who circles silently is guessing from the letters she can already read. Part B gives her a word box of four short u words and three sentences with a blank in the middle. One word in the box fits nothing, so she has to read every sentence instead of matching words to blanks in order. The answer key on page two shows the circled pictures and all three completed sentences.

What’s Included

• 1 print-ready PDF worksheet
• Answer key
• Part A: 6 pictures to say and sort by sound
• Part B: a 4-word box and 3 fill-in-the-blank sentences

Three things make this kindergarten alphabet worksheet worth the ten minutes it takes. First, the pictures carry no printed labels, so the child has to produce the word herself rather than read it — that is what turns listening into a skill. Second, the three wrong pictures use different vowels, so a child who circles by shape instead of by sound gets caught. Third, writing the word on the line is the step that moves short u from something she recognises to something she can spell — which is why this short vowel u worksheet ends with a pencil and not a crayon.

Keep going after the page is done. Walk around the house and hunt for short u objects — a cup, a rug, a button, a bug on the window. Say a word and ask your child to give you a rhyme for it: bun, sun, fun, run. Change one letter of a word she knows and let her read the new one aloud, so hat becomes hut and bag becomes bug. Five minutes of that a day does more for a first grader than another page of circling.

Related Resources

• Short Vowel O Worksheet
• Short Vowel E Worksheet
• Short Vowels List Worksheet
• Letter U Song (Have Fun Teaching)