Speech therapy classes for children: exercises at home for every day

Causes of speech disorders in children

Heredity – mental retardation, hearing impairment in parents.
Intrauterine pathologies (the mother suffered a viral disease during pregnancy and was injured). They develop when the fetus is between 1 and 4 months old.
Premature birth and birth injuries leading to intracranial hemorrhage.
Diseases and injuries in the first years of life: rickets, whooping cough, meningitis, damage to the skull or palate, inflammation of the middle ear.
Psychological reasons: parents do not communicate with the child, treat him poorly, leave him alone too often.

How do you know when it’s time to work on your child’s speech?

Initially, the child learns to pronounce sounds, then to put them into words, then to construct phrases and express thoughts. You should not expect from a two-year-old child impeccably clean pronunciation and beautiful speech, observing genders and cases. In addition, until the age of three, a child will not be able to concentrate on classes for more than 10 minutes.

The optimal age for starting classes for a healthy child is four to five years. By six he should already be able to pronounce sounds correctly and express his thoughts coherently. It is better to correct the pronunciation before the molars grow in.

Classes are needed if:

the baby pronounces individual sounds incorrectly;
the child rearranges syllables in words, constructs phrases incorrectly, confuses cases, gender, and numbers;
“porridge in the mouth”;
speech is too fast, slurred;
the child stutters;
the baby has suffered a birth injury or infectious disease;
The child was diagnosed with hearing impairment, mild mental retardation, and developmental delay.

Even if you are not going to take your child to a speech therapist on an ongoing basis, it is worth bringing him for a consultation - you will receive recommendations for home activities. It is also advised to show the child to a speech therapist before school, even if there are no obvious problems.

The problem of speech disorders is not always purely speech therapy - sometimes it makes sense to correct pronunciation only after treatment.

Speech error correction

When a child is 3-4 years old, correction of speech errors occurs quickly - this is a flexible age for correction and formation of new skills. It is important not to “force” the exercises - first there must be correct placement of the organs of articulation, then an increase in the tempo of the exercise.

The production of sounds is based on gymnastics. Static and dynamic tasks for the language are the basis for many sounds, especially such problematic ones as “r”, “l” and others. Before making sounds, the tongue and lips are warmed up, then the child is explained how to hold/direct them in order to get this or that sound.

If at home you cannot develop articulation, move your tongue correctly and make sounds, it is better to immediately contact a speech therapist. Prolonging the problem will lead to longer work on speech. In addition, the cause of the problem may not be hidden in articulation at all, but in the brain structures, which can only be determined by a pediatric specialist.

Speech problems in children

Speech disorders in children can be caused by the following reasons.

Phonetic underdevelopment

Perhaps the most common type of violation is the incorrect pronunciation of one or more sounds. Before a speech therapist, you can visit an orthodontist - sometimes the problem can be solved by cutting the frenulum.

Phonetic-phonemic underdevelopment

With such a violation, the baby cannot even hear the sound correctly. Difficulties arise with speech, writing, and learning languages. Ask your child to repeat after you the chains of words: “dom-som-kom-lom” or syllables: “gu-ku-gu-ku.” If he makes a mistake, this is a warning sign.

General underdevelopment

Poor vocabulary, difficulty expressing thoughts, inability to write a description of a picture... As a rule, such children begin to speak later than their peers. They find it difficult to concentrate and remember. In addition to a speech therapist, you will most likely need a neurologist.

Pathologies associated with injuries, heart defects, damage to the nervous system

Examples of such pathologies include alalia, aphasia and dysarthria.

Alalia occurs due to damage to the nervous system. The child speaks very poorly, and his speech is meaningless, or he does not speak at all. Also, sometimes a baby may suffer from movement disorders, hyperactivity, or, conversely, retardation.

If alalia implies that speech initially develops incorrectly or does not develop, then aphasia is an acquired disorder. It can be caused by damage to the cerebral cortex, head injuries, and heart defects. With aphasia, children do not understand other people's speech and do not control their own, do not remember words well, and change sounds and syllables.

Dysarthria is a relatively rare disorder in which a person's speech is slurred and slurred. Dysarthria is provoked by disturbances in speech breathing and articulation, which are associated with lesions of the nervous system.

Such problems need to be dealt with comprehensively - with the help of neurologists, teachers, psychologists and speech therapists.

How to create an activity at home?

The main principles of homework:

Regularity. Exercise every day, but without overloading the baby and taking into account his age and well-being. You can start with 3-5 minutes a day, gradually increasing to 15-25.
Game form. Only you know what your child will like most: retelling an interesting story or a competition to see who can pronounce a tongue twister the fastest. Start with tasks that are more interesting to your baby, gradually moving on to less exciting ones.
Comfortable environment. For many types of activities you need, at a minimum, a table, a comfortable chair, and often a mirror on a stand.
Patience. It is impossible to achieve amazing results in one mini-lesson. Encourage your child, praise him for successes and don’t get angry for mistakes, don’t laugh or imitate. Otherwise, the baby will withdraw into himself, and speech problems may worsen.
Do not do tasks for your child if he cannot cope with them. The point of the classes is to benefit the baby, and not to impress the speech therapist.

Rules and frequency of implementation at home

Any skill does not come immediately. To consolidate it, constant training is required. Let's look at the basic rules for doing gymnastics for articulation at home.

Articulation gymnastics for children 3-4 years old is carried out when the child is most ready to assimilate information.
Each task is carried out up to 10 times for consolidation.
Static tasks (when you need to hold the position of organs) last up to 10 seconds. The child is not physiologically ready to hold any longer.
It is better to perform gymnastics while sitting. This is the most comfortable position for the baby: the back and limbs are relaxed, the body is in a natural position.

Types of activities for speech development

Articulation gymnastics

This is a set of exercises that develop the speech apparatus and promote the production of sounds. Articulation gymnastics helps to pronounce words clearly and clearly even without the help of a speech therapist. Suitable for overcoming any speech defects.

You need to exercise twice a day every day. Each lesson is 3-5 minutes, each exercise is five times. You can add no more than one new exercise per day. All classes must be conducted sitting in front of a table mirror. It’s good if the mother or father does them together with the child.

Examples:

1. “Tube”: the lips are pulled forward, the teeth are closed.

2. “Barrier”: the tongue rises behind the upper teeth, the mouth is slightly open.

3. “Swing”: the tongue moves down and up alternately, in each position for several seconds.

4. “Fence”: the lips are held in a smile, the upper and lower front teeth are exposed. 5. “Pancake”: a relaxed tongue is held behind the lower teeth.

6. “Stretch”: the tongue sticks out and reaches for the nose, chin, and corners of the mouth in turn. 7. “Mushroom”: the child should smile, open his mouth wide and suck his wide tongue to the roof of his mouth.

8. “Horse”: the mouth is open, the lips are held in a smile. You need to suck the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth and start flicking your tongue. Performed 5-6 times.

9. “Cup”: smile, open your mouth and bend the edges of your tongue in the shape of a cup.

It is important to learn how to hold the chosen pose for the required time - for example, counting from 1 to 5 or 10.

Development of fine motor skills

The speech center of the brain is located close to the motor center. Scientists have proven that if you develop the fine motor skills of a child’s hands, that is, teach him to perform small, precise movements with his hands and fingers, the speech center will also become active. Such exercises are useful for any speech disorders.

Exercises:

Games with plasticine. For younger children, it is enough to knead it and sculpt figures of one color; for older children, assign multi-colored figures that are more complex.
Sorting small items (especially important in the third year of life). Mix two types of beads or buttons, peas and beans, shells and pebbles in one container and ask your child to separate one from the other. You can “tailor” some story to this - for example, one doll likes peas for dinner, and the other likes beans. Gradually complicate the task - let there be objects of three, four or more types in one container. The baby should perform the exercise with two or three fingers and bend the rest.
Exercise with bulk substances. Teach your child to pour cereals, peas, and lentils from one dish to another (glass, bottle) using a spoon or funnel. Dip small toys and beads into the sand and ask your baby to find them and pull them out with his fingers.
Rolling balls. The child rolls small balls on a flat surface with his palm or finger and does not allow them to slip out.
Playing with paper. The child crumples, tears and kneads a piece of paper, learning to put it in the trash can.
Exercise with raisins. Roll out the dough and invite your child to decorate it with raisins. Let him take each one with two fingers and place it at a distance from each other.

Finger games

One of the types of exercises is “finger games”. This is a short dramatization (often rhythmic, poetic) of stories, fairy tales using fingers. The child repeats the movements of adults.

Examples:

I knock with a hammer (my fists knock against each other), I want to build a house (the fingertips of both hands are connected, depicting the roof of the house). I am building a tall house (palms, touching each other, rise up), I will live in that house (clap our hands).
We wrote, we wrote (we depict the process of writing), our fingers were tired. Let's shake our fingers (shaking the hands) and start writing again (a movement similar to that at the beginning of the exercise).
Four brothers walk towards the eldest (we connect our fingers one by one to make a pinch). Hello big! Hello, Vaska-pointer! (connect the thumb with the index finger). Hello, Little Bear! (large - with medium). Hello, Grishka the orphan! (large - with nameless). Hello, little Timoshka! (big - with little finger).
The fingers played hide and seek and the heads were removed. Like this, like this, and the heads were removed. (All ten fingers rhythmically bend and straighten at the same time.)
Our fingers woke up, stretched, stretched and shook. They ran, ran, ran, ran, galloped, galloped - and got tired. (We depict all the movements one by one, then shake our fingers and put our hands on our knees.)
This finger is grandpa, this finger is grandma, this finger is daddy, this one is mommy, this one is me, this is my family! (At first, the hand is clenched into a fist, then we extend it one finger at a time, and at the end there is an open palm.)

It is advisable to perform the exercises slowly, 3 to 5 times: with one hand, then with the other hand, then with both. After each “session,” relax your fingers and hands by shaking them.

There are no strict rules on the frequency of exercise. The main thing is regularity.

Development of auditory perception, phonemic hearing

Without developed auditory perception, correct oral speech is impossible. Show children pictures of animals and ask them to reproduce the sounds they make. While walking, pay children's attention to the sounds of the street and their differences. Play audio recordings with nature sounds and ask your child what sounds and where. Introduce him to audio fairy tales.

Keep jars of pebbles, cones, vessels with water, pipes and whistles at home. Let the child make the sound from them himself.

By the first grade, a child should already have developed phonemic awareness - the ability to hear and distinguish speech sounds. He must be able to determine whether a word contains a particular sound and select words using it.

Exercises:

"First Sound" Invite your child to name the first sound in the names of the heroes of their favorite fairy tale.
"Cotton". Pronounce different sounds one by one - let the child clap his hands when he hears the one you asked.
"Find similarities." Say several words with the same distinct sound and ask your child what they have in common.
"Guess the object." Make a sound - let the child name the vegetable/fruit/toy that begins with it.
"Lost Sound" Say the sentence so that the first sound is “lost” in one of the words, and let the child “find” it.
"True False". Show your baby a thing, name it and repeat the word, first pronouncing one of the sounds correctly and then incorrectly. Let the child indicate which option is correct.

Vocabulary expansion

A rich vocabulary promotes effective communication and successful study, and also signals to others that this is an erudite person with a developed intellect. Vocabulary can be developed without the help of a speech therapist and at any frequency.

Active replenishment begins at approximately 2-3 years. If for a three-year-old it is enough to know about 1,200 words, then for a six- to seven-year-old child, experts estimate the norm at 3.5 thousand. It is important that the baby not only hears a word briefly, but also understands its meaning, remembers it and uses it several times. Then it will be fixed in the active dictionary.

How to help the process:

Read to your child and with him, and most importantly, let him regularly see how enthusiastically you read books. Be sure to discuss the books you read together.
Involve the child in the conversation, when talking with him and in front of him, speak correctly, use synonyms and antonyms.
Play with your child. For example, in the game “Don’t take black and white, don’t say yes and no.” It begins with the question: “Are you going to the ball?” Next, the presenter builds the dialogue in such a way as to force the player to say the words “yes”, “no”, “black” or “white”, and he must answer, avoiding them. If he says it by accident, he loses.

Exercises:

ask your child to come up with or find synonyms or antonyms for given words in the text;
“What is a tomato? This is a vegetable. What vegetables do you know?”;
“What is the sun doing? What morning?”;
let the child learn to select related words (“table”, “table”, “dining room”, “tabletop”);
ask for a detailed description of an object or creature;
suggest matching the name of the animal with the name of its baby.

Breathing game exercises for training speech breathing

Correct speech breathing ensures proper sound production, normal timbre, clarity, volume, and expressiveness. The baby should learn to use air sparingly and control the time of exhalation.

Examples of exercises (each performed 4-5 times):

"Blowing out the candle." Use a strip of paper as a candle, which is held 10 cm from the child’s lips. He is asked to slowly and smoothly blow on the “candle” so that the “flame” flickers. You need to blow for no longer than 10 seconds, after which there is a 5-second break.
"Inflating a tire." The child spreads his arms in front of him, says “sh-sh-sh” as he exhales, slowly crosses his arms so that the right one is on the left shoulder and vice versa. Then takes the starting position. Then they clench their hands into fists, taking the “pump handle.” Smoothly bend forward with an exhalation on the sound “ssss.” Straightening, involuntary inhalation.
"Airplane". Let the baby spread his arms out to the sides, palms up. Raising your head - inhale. Turn to one side with the pronunciation “zhzh”, exhale, stand straight, lower your arms, pause. The same thing - with a turn in the other direction.
"Hedgehog". Hands on the belt, elbows bent. As you exhale, “puff-puff-puff” and move your elbows forward. Starting position, involuntary inhalation.
"Crow". Hands rise up through the sides. The child slowly lowers his arms and squats, pronouncing “ka-a-ar” in a drawn-out manner. Starting position, involuntary inhalation.
"Geese." Hands on the belt, slowly bend the torso forward, while keeping the head down. We pronounce it drawlingly “ga-a-a.” Starting position, inhale.

Performing exercises in which you need to inhale smoothly through your mouth, without lifting your nose, shoulders and chest, and without puffing out your cheeks.

Music games

Helps develop speech hearing and improve voice control.

Will help:

onomatopoeic songs (“Geese-geese, ha-ha-ha”, “Kwa-kwa, says the frog”);
games with duplicating sounds with words (the drum “does” knock-knock, boom-boom, bell - ding-ding);
dances with short words denoting movements (top-top, jump-jump, skok-skok);
singing sounds with mom or dad (“doo-doo-doo-dudochka”);
performance of any song to the rhythm of clapping and stamping;
Guessing a song by rhythm.

Preparing for gymnastics

The main goal that must be achieved in the process of work is training the basic location of the organs of articulation, developing mobility, and helping to differentiate certain movements. When performing articulation gymnastics, it is important to choose exercises that meet the needs of a particular baby. Tasks are preferable in a certain sequence so that the complexity increases.

What is important to consider when preparing for classes:

Child's motivation. If the activities are not interesting to the child, the benefit from them will be minimal. Pictures, sounds, a mirror and other auxiliary materials must be used in the work.
The mirror helps the child see the position of the tongue and lips. He sees an adult, repeats after him, then correlates the position of his organs. It is extremely important for him to see his lips and tongue, since he cannot yet understand their position.
Classes should be performed in a cycle. Simple tasks are given first, then more difficult ones. It is important to focus on the pace of a particular child. What one learns in 2 weeks, another preschooler may not understand for several months.
Repetition of previous exercises is required. A skill is formed after acquired skills. Therefore, these skills need to be refreshed.
Consistency is important in delivering the right speech. Therefore, exercises should ideally be performed 2 times a day, and take 5-10 minutes - this is the time of high concentration of attention of a 3-4 year old preschooler.
At 3-4 years old, it is important to pay attention to the development of the tongue - exercises are aimed at the muscles of the organ.
A good bonus of the lesson is the musical accompaniment.

There are many exercises and concepts for doing them. Some spend them in a fairy tale, others with separate tasks. Specialists approach each child individually, choosing what will be acceptable for him.

Pronunciation of complex sounds

Articulation develops gradually; children usually master the pronunciation of complex sounds last. Often in speech the child replaces them with simpler ones or does not pronounce them at all.

Sound "R"

Experts advise studying this difficult sound in a child at the age of 5. If the baby pronounces “r”, but incorrectly, then even earlier - then it’s more difficult to relearn.

To help:

Tongue twisters with “r” (“Karl stole corals from Clara, and Clara stole Karl’s clarinet.”
Imitation (just say “r” in your speech in front of the child as clearly and cleanly as possible).
Production from other sounds that the child pronounces correctly. For example, when a child pronounces “zh”, carefully move the tongue deeper into the mouth with a stick - a “r” is formed. Strengthen the sound by repeating the exercise several times. Or the baby says “z”, lightly touching the alveoli with his tongue, and blows heavily on the tongue. The sound "r" is heard.
Three-stage exercise: the tongue is “sucked” to the hard palate, the child takes a deep breath through the nose and a short exhale through the mouth, connecting the voice.
Setting up mechanically (carried out only by a speech therapist - with a hammer, spatula).

Sound "Sh"

The production of this sound occurs at 3–5 years of age.

The most commonly used way is through “s”. The child raises his tongue to the sky, pronounces “s” and smoothly exhales air to make “sh”. Before directly placing the “w,” experts recommend developing articulation of the lips and tongue with the help of exercises:

A wide smile, exposing both rows of teeth, for 5-7 seconds.
Licking lips with a “wide tongue” from top to bottom.
Curling the wide tip of the tongue towards the nose.
The child stretches out his lips with a straw and blows on a cotton ball for a long time, pushing it, for example, into the corner of the table.
The baby blows through his closed lips onto a strip of paper - stronger, weaker, stronger again.

Articulatory gymnastics: definition

The articulation apparatus is the basis of correct speech. If it is underdeveloped, the pronunciation of sounds will suffer. The apparatus consists of the tongue, lips, larynx, vocal folds, soft and hard palate, teeth and nasopharynx. All these organs are extremely important for the development of pronunciation, which begins at birth and continues throughout life, depending on the child’s speech practice.

In children 3-4 years old, the articulatory apparatus is in a phase of active development. If you help your child during this period to correctly use the organs involved in pronunciation, future speech problems will significantly decrease. The most effective help is to perform articulatory gymnastics.