When you say “Speech Homework†do your kids hide under the kitchen table? Offer to do chores instead? Homework, or home practice, in speech therapy for articulation can be enjoyable for our young patients and their parents. Home practice can be so much more than flashcard drills. Let’s get creative and put the FUN in FUNctional for your home program. These are ideas for practicing sounds that your student is able to produce, but needs to practice using more often. Don’t try these for sounds that have not yet emerged – that will just frustrate you and your talker.
Before you get started:
-  Know your current therapy goals. Pick a sound (like /r/, /s/, /l/) or a group of sounds (velars, /k,g/). If you’re not sure contact your SLP for a therapy update.
- Â Use the picture cards and practice pages your therapist has sent home or make your own simple cards.
Ways to play:
- Cut apart the picture cards. Hide them around a dark room. Turn off the lights and give your student a flashlight. Each time he finds a picture card, have him say it alone or in a sentence.
- Place 10 picture cards on a table. Compete with your child to create silly, weird sentences using as many target words as possible.
- Slide a paper clip onto each picture card. Scatter the cards on the floor. Attach a magnet to a string and go fishing. Each time your student catches a “fish†practice the target word together.
- Read aloud together and have her identify and repeat words that contain her target sound as you encounter them together in the story.
- In the car, play I Spy, looking for items that begin with the target sound.
- Gather magazines and catalogs. Armed with scissors, glue and construction paper, work together to find pictures of items that contain the target sound. As you cut and paste them onto a collage, use the target words in sentences.
If you are unsure about your practice time, ask your therapist if you can sit in on a visit. Or perhaps she can email a video of techniques that are working in the therapy sessions. We are eager to see your children make progress and achieve their goals, so we’ll do whatever we can to encourage super fun and functional home practice.