Home and School Program for Articulation

DEAR PARENT AND TEACHER,

The information, exercises and suggestions are intended for use by you in
working with your student to develop age-appropriate articulation skills.

If your child has not demonstrated the ability to produce the sounds, you
should use only the auditory stimulation exercises until you see evidence that
he/she is beginning to be able to produce the sounds correctly at least some of
the time.

If your child has demonstrated the ability to produce the sounds, you may use
the auditory stimulation as well as the production exercises.

Please do not hesitate to call the speech-language liaison at Van Hoose

(485-3254) if you need further information or clarification.

Auditory Stimulation
GENERAL
Read often to your child. During reading, slightly emphasize the sounds that he/she has
difficulty producing. Occasionally draw attention to words or pictures that start with or
contain the error sound. Play catch me during which you tell your child that sometimes you
will say a word incorrectly and see if he/she can catch you and then pronounce the word
correctly emphasizing the contrast between correct and incorrect production. Do not
necessarily expect your child to be able to imitate the correct production but encourage all
attempts to try. Remember to make reading a special time for your child and dont get so
caught up in the sounds that the sense or fun of the story and your time together is lost.

SPEECH PRACTICE TIME

Try to devote about 5 or 10 (no more) minutes a day to speech practice. During the auditory
stimulation phase you may want to try the following games/exercises.
1.

Give your childs sound a special name and perhaps associate it with a picture. For
instance, the r sound is often called the growling lion (or dog sound). The unvoiced th
as in thumb could be the mad goose. The s sound may be the hissing snake or the
leaking tire sound, and the z is the buzzing bee. The l sound can be the singing sound
(la, la). It doesnt really matter what you associate the sound with as long as there is a
logical connection between the sound and the picture. When you talk about the sound,
use the special name as opposed to the name of the associated letter. If your child is a
reader, you can certainly point out the connection between the sound and certain
letters, but dont forget that different letters make the same sound or the same
letter can make different sounds. (i.e. city for the s sound, dogs has the z sound,
station has the sh sound, etc.)

2.

Help your child locate pictures (if a non-reader) or words (in newspapers, etc.)
that contain his/her sound. Paste them on papers or in a scrapbook for practice. Help
your child hear where the sound occurs in the word (beginning, middle, end). If you
have a computer, your child may have fun locating pictures in the computer that
contain his/her sound (from KidPix, CD-ROM, graphics programs, etc.) and printing
them on the printer. Play catch me again where your child has to identify when you

make an error producing the ord. If your child is reading, his/her spelling lists,
vocabulary lists, etc. are good sources for words that contain the error sound.
3.

Find picture sources for each sound that needs practice. Paste the pictures on
index cards to be used for any number of games. If you duplicate the pictures before
cutting and pasting you can use them for matching card games such as Memory or Go
Fish.

The important thing to remember in all of the auditory stimulation

activities is to give your child plenty of opportunity to hear the sounds
produced correctly, to identify his/her sounds easily, and to be able to tell
when the sound is not produced correctly by another person.

Production Exercises
The following suggestions follow the sequence of instruction that speech-language
clinicians usually use when treating articulation disorders with one notable exception.
During the screening your child was able to produce his error sounds correctly when given
only an auditory model. So there is no need to actually teach him/her how to produce the
sound. At this point, your child needs lots of practice producing the sound. Do not use
these production exercises until your child has demonstrated the ability to imitate your
production of the sound with just your verbal model. Many children will move through this
sequence very rapidly but dont spend too little time at each stage. Daily practice with the
nonsense syllables as a warm-up drill even after your child has passed step 2 is an
excellent way to reinforce correct production.
1.

Let your child produce the sound by itself, holding on to it, feeling it in his/her
mouth, watching him/herself in a mirror, and listening to the sound. Provide feedback
to your child such as thats good, it sounds just like mine, or Thats really close, lets
try it again, etc.

2.

When your child can produce the sound easily in isolation, let him/her produce
the sound in nonsense syllables. These are syllables that contain the long vowels, a, e, i,
o, u. The target sound is put first at the beginning (e.g. say, see, sigh, so sue), then at
the end (s, s, ice, s, s), and then in the middle (s, s, s, s, s). When your
child can produce these syllables correctly at a rate of 1/second or faster, then
he/she should be ready to move on to words. However, continued rapid drill with
nonsense syllables even after your child has moved on to words, will help strengthen
the motor memory and pattern for the correct sound.

3.

At the word level, your child will enjoy playing games with her/ her picture cards
(younger children), looking through his/her scrap book and picture collection and saying
the words he has collected.
Older children dont need games as much and can spend time drilling on word lists from
school curriculum with attention to correct production. Using vocabulary lists where
you provide the definition and the child has to provide the word is an excellent way of
practicing speech production and vocabulary definitions at the same time.
Open-ended (fill in the blank) sentences and riddle games are excellent for eliciting
single word production. (i.e. You eat soup with a _____ to elicit the word spoon, or

I am thinking of something that is furry, has long ears and eats carrots to elicit the
word rabbit)
At first, you may need to provide feedback on every word; however, the goal is for
your child to recognize when he/she has not produced a correct sound and to selfcorrect. Use of a tape recorder is helpful and allows the child to practice alone, tape
record and then let you review the tape when you have time.
4.

At the phrase level, most children enjoy creating silly phrases using adjectives
with their sound and a list of nouns with their sound. For instance, a stack of picture or
word cards depicting silly, sick, sad, sunny, six, smelly, stinky, etc. and a
stack of s nouns, snake, suitcase, soap, seal, and sink can result in
combinations such as silly seal, sick soap, smelly sink, etc. The grosser or more
improbable the phrase, the more hilarious the kids will find it.

5.

At the sentence level, its usually a good idea to start with some kind of patterned
sentence like I see a _____, I like to _____, I really like _____, etc. depending
on what the target sound is. Then the child can fill in the blank with a single word from
his/her picture collection, word list, or a silly phrase.

6.

After structured sentences are being done easily with minimal correction, its a
good idea to let the child start creating his/her own sentences using pictures, words,
phrases, etc.

7.

If your child can read, let him/her go through coloring books, old storybooks, comic
books, etc. and use a highlighter to mark words that contain his/her sound. This alerts
the child to the presence of the sound and helps him/her remember without a verbal
reminder from you to produce the sound correctly. After your child can do his/her
sound correctly with this visual reminder, just have him. Her read without pre-marking
the words.

8.

At the conversational level, choose small segments of time during which you are going
to monitor your childs conversational speech. Perhaps when your child is doing
homework, or at the dinner table, or during bath time, etc. Let your child know ahead
of time when you will be monitoring and keep the time limited to 5 or 10 minute
segments at first. You can gradually increase the time and situations during which you
expect your child to use his/her new sounds correctly.