Some strategies and activities for helping a young child’s development of sounds used for speech.
- Children’s speech sounds can be helped by practising some simple listening activities. These help to develop a child’s awareness of sound which in turn helps the child to listen to their own speech production and gradually develop the sounds they make.
- Encourage your child to look at you when you are speaking. We all get a lot of information about how sounds are produced and about what someone is saying from looking at their faces. We all lip-read, whether we are aware of this or not. So that your child can see your face, it will help if you get down to the child’s level. For example if they are standing or sitting at a low table you may need to sit on the floor so that your head is at the same level (or similar) to theirs.
- Look at picture books or picture puzzles that give plenty of opportunity for you to say words for your child to hear. Speak in a clear voice and try to encourage your child to look at your face when you are speaking. For example: Bring the puzzle pieces up near your face to show them to your child.
- Read nursery rhymes or poems with your child. Emphasise and play with the rhyming words. Read the same rhymes again and again so that your child becomes familiar with them and can then be encouraged to join in with the rhyming words. Action rhymes can be used in the same way. Rhyming is important for developing awareness of sounds and will help your child later with their reading and writing skills.
- Playing with sounds: play with making sounds: Animal sounds; noises of aeroplanes, trains and cars; things around the house that make a noise – see if you (the parent) can copy the sounds that you hear. Your child will enjoy hearing you make the sounds and may be tempted to try to say them themselves if they hear them often enough.
- Babies can be encouraged to practice making sounds when you babble to them and/or copy the sounds that you hear them make.