Working on speech sounds

Input activities

An important step in supporting speech sounds is to give the child lots of opportunities to hear the correct production of sounds. At this stage, the focus is only on the child listening. It's great if they join in or copy you, but do not force them to repeat words or correct any errors.

Be creative and try to incorporate the child’s interests, either in the words you use or the games and activities you play. Be positive and give lots of praise.

Remember, it is important we model the sound and not the letter when working on speech sounds. For example, we must say ‘p’ and not ‘puh’ or ‘pee’.

Auditory bombardment 

This means repeating sounds lots of times so the child can hear it being pronounced correctly.

Activity ideas

• Read stories with repetitive sounds: For example, ‘The 3 little pigs’ has lots of 'p' words in it.
• Share tongue twisters: For example, ‘She sells seashells by the seashore.'
• Bingo or matching pairs: Use pictures or items that start with the same sound.
• Sound bag or box: Collect objects starting with the same sound and put them in a bag or box. For example, if you are supporting a child who finds 's' tricky you could include a sock, soap, sack, a toy saw and a picture of a sandwich. As the child pulls them out, you can name them and talk about them, using the target sound lots of times.
• Sound loaded scenes: Find pictures that contain lots of images relating to the same target sound. For example, a ‘f’ loaded scene might have ‘fish’, ‘fox’, ‘fingers’, ‘fireworks’, ‘finding’, ‘four’, ‘farm’ and ‘fairies’.

Auditory discrimination

This means being able to hear the difference between sounds. Use a sound that the child struggles with, such as ‘c’, and think about what they replace it with, such as ‘t’. This is your contrasting pair.

Use pictures to represent the 2 sounds. These could be the Jolly Phonics pictures, Read-Write-Inc pictures, or ones provided by a speech and language therapist. Familiarise the child with the pictures (if they are not already) by showing them the pictures and saying the sounds they relate to. Once the child is familiar with the sounds, produce the sounds in a random order. See if the child can point to the matching picture for each sound you say.

If the child makes an error, repeat the sound, emphasising it to make the contrast between the sounds greater. 

Activity ideas

• Stepping stones: Place the sound pictures on the floor. As you produce the sounds, the child has to jump onto the correct sound picture.
• Building blocks: The child should place a brick on top of the sound picture for the sound that they hear. See how many bricks your child can build up on each picture before the tower falls.
• Skittles: Stick the sound pictures onto skittles. As you produce the sound, the child must knock down the skittle with the corresponding picture on it.
• Running: Put the sound pictures at either end of the room or at different places in an outdoor space. The child has to run to the picture matching the sound you say. The game can be varied by asking the child to jump, skip or hop to a particular sound picture.
• Stamps, stickers and colouring in: The child gets to stamp an ink stamp, stick on a sticker or colour in a little bit of the picture when they hear 1 of the sounds.
• Jigsaws: Use a wooden inset jigsaw puzzle. Put some pieces on each sound picture. The child can choose a piece from the sound picture you say and add it to the puzzle.
• Bubbles: The child blows bubbles in the direction of the sound picture you say.
• Hoops: Put 2 hoops on the floor with 1 sound picture in each. The child must jump into the hoop of the sound you say.

These activities can also be done with pictures or objects that start with your contrasting pair, such as 'key' and 'tea'. You can search 'minimal pairs' online for lists and pictures.