Children with speech delays or phonological sound production problems generally tend to have a particular difficulty with one or more sounds. For these speech problems, there are various oral motor exercises that speech therapists would suggest, which for a child can be very boring.
Instead, fun activities can be an alternative to speech therapy for children.
Working With ch Sound: Emphasising on particular sounds such as ch can help children with phonological problems correct their speech. There are a few fun activities like snack activities, music and art that stress on the ch sound that can help children.
- The bright side of these activities is that they are performed in a group. Children when in groups respond to such stressing on sound very easily, especially when it involves some fun as well.
- ch sounds as chew, choo, cheese et., are a part of these fun activities and exercising on the ch can improve a child’s speech.
Fun Activities Can Be An Alternative to Speech Therapy For Children: The first speech therapist of a toddler would definitely be it’s parents. So, the fun activities have to start from home itself.
- There are many books available for children, for our exercise we can choose a book on trains (lots of books can be found on trains). Read out these books to your child and ask him/her to repeat the choo sound along with you. This is a wonderful fun activity as well as exercise to begin with.
- Musical chairs is also a wonderful activity as this involves a group of children. The children can be played songs on trains that stress on the choo sound, as the music for their activity. They can be asked to sing along while playing or may be just say choo choo.
- Cartoons are another way of teaching your children the ch sound. As part of our activity we can use the famous Tom & Jerry cartoon. Show the child Jerry’s cheese and ask to pronounce it each time it is seen. This way both fun and the activity can be simultaneous.
- Snack activities, especially cheese and biscuits, can be wonderful to exercise the ch sound. Feed the child cheese and biscuits and each time the child is fed, make them utter the word cheese. This way every cheesy bite would stress on the ch sound.
Fun activities can be an alternative to speech therapy for children, especially considering the boredom associated with oral motor exercises.
