How Can Parents Do Speech Practice at Home?
5 Quick Tips for Speech Practice at Home
Speech practice can be quick & simple with these 5 tips! Remember, speech practice is all about getting your child to practice their skills in the home environment to help their hard work transfer from the speech office to home/school.
Put your homework sheet on your refrigerator! It’s a perfect visual reminder to get you thinking about doing speech practice with your child every day.
Set a reminder on your phone (or your child’s phone!) and try to stick to it. Being so busy, a little digital reminder will go a long way to help you remember to do a little daily practice.
Use your child’s interests to make practice more fun! Drive their favorite car over their speech picture cards and have your child say them as you do it. Ask them to use their favorite stuffed animal as a puppet and get the puppet to practice saying their speech words.
Break up the practice into a few sessions of 2-3 minutes a day. Turn it into a race to see how much speech practice can be done before time runs out!
Send notes, texts, audio, or video messages to family and friends of your child working on their special sounds. It can be rewarding to share your child’s hard work and the responses may be motivating for them!
Try these tips and see how it goes! Check back for more tips & tricks or comment to let me know how these tips worked for you.
Alexis Fernandez is a bilingual speech therapist serving the DC, Bethesda, Chevy Chase, Spring Valley, Kensington, and Potomac area. If you’re currently searching for therapy or to see if your child would benefit from speech therapy, check out our page on speech and language development and milestones.