And now a word from your teacher...
If your child's speech and language teacher has not already given them picture or word cards to practice at home, please ask for them. It is extremely important to practice at home with your child. It helps your child reach his/her speech goal at a faster pace. It assists your child in "cementing" their knowledge and use of proper sound production. In addition to the practice cards, you may want to ask your child's speech and language teacher how they teach the sound, what terms they use and what instructions they have provided your child for correct production of his/her sound. This will also help your child learn for all of the reasons stated above. Even if the sound is not perfect, ... here it comes..., practice really does make perfect.
Note: Often a child discovers that they can "cheat" by seeing through the cards when playing a game. I recommend cutting out the pictures and gluing them to pieces of construction paper. This prevents this from happening as well as making them more sturdy and long lasting.
Activities for articulation practice
Play a "go Fish" game with articulation cards. Be sure your child practices his/her sound for every card chosen.
Play a memory or concentration with the his/her articulation cards.
Play any board game you have at home. Whatever number is rolled or spun, have your child practice his/her sound and move the number of times.
Tape the pictures in various places around a room or your home (depending how ambitious you are). Then, shut off the lights and go around with a flashlight playing "I Spy". Have your child say the phrase I spy____". Have them collect the card each time one is chosen (make sure to remember how many cards you used).
Use the pictures or small objects (I often use the small object shaped erasers found in any dollar store) containing you child's target sound. Hide them in the plastic Easter eggs and go on an egg hunt. Have them practice each sound/word/phrase/sentence as they find the eggs.
Place the cards on the floor and have a bean bag toss. Each card the bean bag lands on, label. You can make this more challenging if you do this as you would a memory or concentration game. The bean bag has to hit both pictures to be a match. Whoever has gets a match can go again, and whoever has the most matches at the end of the game is the winner.
Many of us as children played the game "I packed my grandmother's trunk." For those of you who did not, it is played like this: You have a bag/box/trunk or container of any kind and either objects or pictures of words containing your child's target sound. Take turns saying "I packed my grandmother's trunk and in it I put___," and on each turn add an item. The next person to go says the first word then adds their own item, stating its label. Each time an object is added, it and all previous items need to be recalled and stated. This game goes on until someone cannot recall all items in the container. How stringent you are to these rules (ex. whether or not you provide hints) is up to you. This game provides the child with MANY opportunities for sound practice.
Create several different BINGO boards with pictures/words containing your childs target sound (many speech and language teachers have them on hand, ask them for a copy). Play BINGO and have your child be the caller. You can use pennies, scraps of paper, pieces of cereal...anything as the chips to cover the pictures of the items called.
***For more links, ideas and information, please refer to the Web Links section of the homepage.