Home Practice: Speech Sounds
Ready for some home practice? Remember that learning a new way of making a speech sound relies on developing new muscle memory. Just like learning a new move in a sport or a new instrument, our muscles need a ton of repetition before the new movement is habitual. Once your child can consistently make the correct production of the target sound in speech therapy sessions, it may be time to do drilled daily practice. Here are some resources to get you going:
Wordlists: it’s helpful to have a list of target words so you can incorporate them into any game or activity!
Below are some online games you can use to practice. Have your little one say a word from the wordlist 5 times correctly every time it’s their turn. You and anyone else playing the game should do the same on your turns. It's a good opportunity to model correct productions. You can even throw in a mistake on purpose to see if they’re listening! You can certainly use any game you have at home this same way. If your child has older siblings who might want to participate it can be fun to get the whole family involved.
I love this list of resources from the Pedi Speechie: https://thepedispeechie.com/2023/06/free-online-speech-therapy-games-websites-tools.html
https://toytheater.com/category/games/
https://pbskids.org/games - "Dressing Up Clifford" and "Hair Studio" are preschool favorites
Always remember that it’s important to keep communication fun and stress-free. Avoid correcting your child while they’re talking. Use dedicated practice time as a time to make corrections and give feedback. If your little one is getting frustrated at any point, just stop the game! Let the speech therapist tackle the tricky parts of making speech sounds during your next session. We want our children to enjoy communicating.
Happy practicing!
