Patach

So, what you should be wondering first is, wait - isn't that Alef?
Yep. As I said before, Alef doesn't sound like anything without a vowel stuck on it somewhere. Similarly, the vowels need to be stuck on some kind of letter - most of them never appear on their own. So I'm using Alef here. Yes, that little line under Alef is a vowel.

This vowel sounds somewhere between the A in father and the A in hat. So sounds a lot like the "ah" sound you make when you open your mouth at the doctor's.

How do you remember this one? Well, the best I could come up with is "ant." Imagine that the line under is a little ant. And the first sound in ANT is A. Does that work for you? I hope so! Here's an example of what you could picture:

So, is that firmly entrenched in your psyche? Great.
Now you're reading vowels already, so let's get ourselves another consonant. In my anal retentiveness, we're going to go in the order of the Alefbet, except for a few excursions to pick up some more vowels as we need them. Next on our list is Bet. You ready?