3 Easy Tips for Practicing Speech Sounds at Home
Happy 2025! We know that adjusting back to reality after the holidays can take some time..or like maybe all of January. How about some easy ways to practice speech sounds at home as we are adjusting to a new year? If your child comes to speech therapy for articulation (working on specific sounds), we always recommend practicing sounds at home throughout the week. Practicing any skill outside of therapy is hugely beneficial to your child because it allows them to practice that skill in a variety of different settings and with different people - this allows for better generalization of the skill outside of the therapy setting.
Here’s the facts: Children make quicker progress when they practice outside of therapy! As therapists, it’s our job to help you figure out how to make this easier for you and your families.
Finding what works best for your child truly depends on your child and their specific interests and motivations. So let’s get this year started with some helpful tips.
Make it Accessible
For many of us, one of the easiest ways we remember to do anything is by giving ourselves reminders, and making it accessible.
An easy way to do this is by having words or pictures on hand in easy places where they will get seen. Some places I usually recommend are the fridge, car, or bathroom mirror. This makes it really easy to practice daily for a few minutes at a time. Make your own list or ASK YOUR SLP if you need help with this! Here’s some other suggestions for easy and accessible home practice:
Keep a small word list in the car for daily practice for a few minutes at a time on the way to / from school, or between daily activities.
Hang your child’s weekly speech homework on the fridge for some quick daily practice!
Keep a running list of words on your phone so you have it with you wherever you go for quick practice!
Hang a list / speech homework on their bathroom mirror and help them practice for a few minutes before or after brushing teeth in the mornings and evenings.
Put post-it notes with your child’s sounds on their nightstand as a reminder, then look out for words with those sounds to practice while reading stories before bed.
If they are older, help your child make their own reminders and encourage them to put in places around the house where they will see and remember to practice!
A note to say - you do not have to have excessively long word lists to practice! You could make a list of 10 words, and practice each one 10x for 100 trials!
Make it natural
If a word comes up in conversation with your child that has a target sound, take a minute to stop and practice that word! You do not have to do this with every single target sound you hear as your child is talking, but allowing opportunities to stop and practice in the moment can help them be thinking about using target sounds naturally in conversation.
Here’s an example of how this might look: let’s say your child practicing /s/ clusters. You go to the park and they say “let’s go fing!” You know they mean swing, so you can take this opportunity to model: “let’s go swing! Swing has our /s/ sound that we’ve been practicing. Can you say it with me? “swing!” Sometimes these natural opportunities for practicing are more effective than sitting down to drill target words from a worksheet.
Make it Motivating
Here’s the fun part! Figuring out what is motivating to your child and having fun with it. Here’s a few examples :
Work a puzzle with your child and have them practice their sound every time they find a piece
Encourage your child to listen for words that have their sounds during shared book reading
Practice sounds while playing a game
It might take some brainstorming, but the neat thing is that you can likely fit speech sound practice into whatever your child’s interests are / daily activities. We absolutely can (and do) practice during shared book reading, talking about our favorite topics, pretend play, dress up, racing cars, playing catch..the list is endless!
We promise that if you can figure out ways to naturally incorporate practice into your day, it will get easier and allow for quicker progress! Need specific suggestions? Ask your SLP or reach out to us! We’re here to help.
