- Decrease pressure on speech and do not correct the child.
- Use positive approach/ help to build confidence. Encourage the child to give you clues for example gestures/ signs/ showing you what they want, to support their speech.
- Ask yes/no questions or give forced alternatives to help understanding of responses.
- Use a home link or communication book to send to nursery to find out information and help you understand when the child is retelling you an event that happened in a school and vice versa.
- Repeat back what you think you have understood when the child is talking to check for meaning.
Discrimination/ listening activities:
- Ready steady go games
- Sound location (hide a noisemaker and encourage your child to find it)
- Musical bumps/ statues.
- Musical instruments – listening and finding the matching instrument, copying rhythm/ sequence of sounds. Sound lottos (environmental/symbolic noises)
Rhythm and rhyme:
- Syllable and rhyme awareness normally begins to develop when a child is three/four years old
- Activities to develop these skills will help your child with speech sound difficulties
- Rhythm and syllables
- Copying clapping/drumming patterns
- Clapping syllables in names
- Clapping syllables of familiar things e.g. cat vs Caterpillar
Rhyme:
- Rhyme is a good way to develop a child’s storage of sounds/words, e.g. key/tea
- Nursery rhymes
- Discriminating between rhyming words
- Identifying rhyming words e.g. tap/cap
- Generating rhymes
- Helping production of sounds
During everyday conversations, model the right way to say the words for the child, remember not to correct.
During structured activities, remember the sequence of development (single sound, sound in a word, sound in a short phrase and sound in a sentence) if the child can say the sound on its own – try modeling it back at the beginning of the word with a gap, e.g. t-a-p
Give the child as many clues as you can:
- Encourage them to look at your mouth
- Look in a mirror together
- Talk about how and where the sound is made