Your child is asked to work on his or her speech sound at home. Straight up drill work is not always fun for our rambunctious little kiddos and probably the last thing they want to do when they get home from school is practice their speech sound. Here are some fun ways to incorporate play into their speech practice, and they’ll be having so much fun they might just forget they’re actually working on their sounds!
You know those toy plastic bowling pins and balls? Those are GREAT to incorporate into speech practice, plus it gets your child moving. If you don’t have those, you could always use those Puffs snack containers or something similar. When I was doing therapy, I’d “bowl” with my kiddos. I’d take artic picture cards (ask your therapist for copies, or you can find pictures online targeting your child’s sound) and tape them on the pins, one-two per pin. Then take turns rolling the ball and knocking over the pins. This would be a great way to incorporate the siblings too. Have your child say the word on the picture of the pin that gets knocked over. Odds are they will get lots of practice because they will probably want to keep bowling!
Take a few minutes and take turns hiding the artic pictures around your house. When you find the picture, say the word. To kick things up a notch and make it even more interesting, you can always dim the lights and have your child use a flashlight to find the pictures. My kids at work always felt so important with their flashlight, like some kind of investigator or something.
Does your child like to play games? Incorporate their artic into the game! Have your stack of cards and before your child takes a turn (or even every other turn), they need to say their word five times.
Maybe you are out at the grocery store or running errands somewhere. Have your child think of as many words as they can that start with their sound. So, say they are working on /s/ and you’re at the grocery store. They could say “sandwich”, “salad”, “soup”, “soda”, etc.
Included in this blog is a free /p/ sound printable! You can grab that here. It contains 36 playing cards and targets /p/ in the initial, middle, and final positions of words. Maybe your child is working on /p/. Maybe they’re not. Either way, keep checking back on my site for more free printable sound cards and maybe you will find the sound your child is working on!
