Speech therapy exercises for children from 5 to 6 years old at home

Competent and clear, intelligible and understandable speech of a preschooler is the dream of any parent, but situations often arise when problems in pronouncing sounds are so obvious that it is impossible to do without the intervention of professionals. Speech therapy classes for children aged 5-6 years, conducted at home, become important. Various exercises performed by children under the strict guidance of loving parents often turn out to be more effective and useful than regular meetings with a speech pathologist.

Speech development of children 5-6 years old

5-6 years is a crucial period in a child’s life, since his active preparation for school begins. And if a year ago it was possible to blame all the problems on a young age, now you have to face the truth - if a child does not pronounce most of the sounds correctly, gets confused, cannot construct a coherent sentence, then a serious problem is obvious and you can’t put off a visit to a professional any longer .

Children at this age should already speak coherently, have developed phonemic awareness, and be able to formulate narrative, interrogative and incentive sentences. A normal rate of speech is formed by the age of five; slow or, on the contrary, very fast and unclear speech at this age is extremely undesirable.

Also among the speech norms is the following.

• Correct pronunciation of all sounds - each of them must sound clearly both as part of a syllable and word, and in the whole sentence.
• Ability to convey exclamatory and interrogative intonation.
• The vocabulary is becoming more and more rich; parents will no longer be able to list all the words that their child knows; there are about 3 thousand of them. Also at this age, many children actively come up with new words, funny and unusual, which will be forgotten over time. Involuntary memory is actively developing, so kids can easily remember expressions they just heard.
• Speech begins to contain phrases that are complex in construction, sentences become more and more detailed, and the child is able to talk in detail about the event he witnessed.
• By the age of 5-6 years, the traditionally “difficult” phonemes [p] and [l] should already be clearly heard in the speech of children, but if this does not happen, then there is a problem and the help of a speech therapist is required.

You can understand that the speech development of a five-year-old child corresponds to his age by his ability to come up with a coherent story based on a picture, the presence in his speech of various parts of speech, abstract and generalizing words. Errors such as incorrect use of plural forms (“apples” instead of “apples”) only indicate that the preschooler does not yet have enough knowledge to correctly construct a phrase, and they have nothing to do with speech problems.

Each child is an individual, so his “results” are best assessed not in comparison with other children, but by comparing his own results from different periods.

Home speech therapy classes for children 5-6 years old on pronunciation of sounds

If classes take place only in the office of a speech therapist, then one should not expect much benefit from such training.

For your information! You need to study at home, because the baby spends most of his time there, and here he feels most confident.

Lesson in the form of a game

Such lessons should be conducted in the form of a game. This will not tire the baby so much and will make him sincerely interested in the process. He will be looking forward to a new activity with pleasure.

Important! The primary exercise in classes to improve the quality of speech is gymnastics.

It is advisable for parents to directly take part in such a game, pronounce and complete all tasks. It would be a good idea to include tongue twisters in your lessons, print out and read poems aloud.

Speech therapy games for children 5-6 years old for the development of clear speech

At five years old, it’s time to slowly prepare your child for school, and this is where you can combine speech improvement exercises with preparation for first grade. For this, it is very useful to read a lot aloud to the baby (from birth).

For your information! You need to talk a lot with the baby, discuss with him the cartoon you watched or the events that happened the day before.

Possible speech defects

There are situations when children, without any problems, are simply too lazy to say words out loud, confident that they will be understood anyway. Parents should pay special attention to the child if he speaks little, confuses syllables and words, does not understand the meaning of what is said - most often this is due to various speech defects that will have to be corrected in speech therapy classes.

There are several types of speech impairment possible:

• stuttering;
• dyslalia – children with normal hearing and speech apparatus confuse the consonant phonemes [r] and [l], [w] and [z].
• nasality - pronouncing words “in the nose”, which makes understanding the child very problematic;
• the child does not understand the parents’ speech and does not speak himself;
• pronounces sounds incorrectly – difficulties with articulation.

In case of any of them, you should start speech therapy classes - with a professional defectologist and at home, otherwise the child will be left with delayed speech development and may not be accepted into a comprehensive school, or may be asked to attend a specialized institution. But the situation can be corrected through speech therapy.

When you need help

Reacting with a smile to words

Experts assure that you can understand what problems may arise in speech almost from birth:

• if by the end of 1 month the baby does not try to let him know by screaming that it is time for him to eat, or when he experiences discomfort;
• if at the end of 4 months he does not respond with a smile;
• if by the end of the fifth month he does not make individual sounds, pointing with his gaze at the object he means. For example, mom asks: “Where is the rattle?”;
• by the end of the 7th month does not try to attract attention with the help of spoken sounds;
• at the end of the 9th month, words consisting of repeated syllables, such as “ma-ma”, “pa-pa”, did not appear in the baby’s vocabulary;
• at 12 months does not respond to simple requests: “Give me a toy.”

Types of speech defects

Before you start classes, you need to know the types of speech disorders:

• stuttering;
• dyslalia;
• nasality;
• neurological diseases.

For your information! To identify them, you just need to regularly communicate with your child.

How to give speech therapy massage to a child at home

Basic characteristics of speech at 5-6 years old

By this time, speech develops and becomes more complex. The baby is already able to make hissing and whistling sounds. The expressiveness of speech increases, you can notice this when reading poetry and in role-playing games. It becomes coherent and sentences become more common. Children are already able to retell a fairy tale or describe a picture.

In what cases should you visit a specialist?

There are several signs that indicate your child's speech needs professional help:

• very poor vocabulary;
• inability to correctly pronounce a large number of sounds;
• incorrect choice of word, lack of correlation between the word and the object to which it refers;
• constant omission of some syllables in words;
• slow or, on the contrary, very fast speech, pronouncing most words in syllables;
• slurred speech, stuttering;
• constant hesitations and pauses.

In these cases, it is necessary to show the child to a speech therapist, possibly a neurologist, as quickly as possible, this will help identify the causes of the disorders and eliminate them.

Role of parents

You should not assume that classes with a speech therapist alone will help the child completely solve the problem - parents should take a direct part in this. The child spends most of his time at home, so training should be carried out there.

Speech therapists advise parents to adhere to the following rules.

• Do not scold the baby for mistakes he has made in pronouncing sounds, but correct them.
• Encourage the child for his efforts and success, listen carefully to what he says about classes with a speech therapist, and show sincere interest.
• Ensure that the speech of family members is literate and correct.
• Before showing this or that exercise to a preschooler, you should practice in front of the mirror, check that everything is working out clearly and correctly.
• Ensure that children complete the speech therapist’s homework.
• Strives to ensure that every task is completed to the end, correctly, and diligently.
• Conduct classes daily - they can be small, but mandatory, they should become a good habit.

Specialist speech pathologists advise creating an atmosphere of correct speech for the child: reading him poems, fairy tales, singing songs more often, discussing any natural phenomena with the child, but it is better to keep TV watching to a minimum.

Speech therapy classes for children 5-6 years old at home: exercises

Most of the classes are carried out using games, of which, fortunately, there are a lot. All of them were developed by professional speech therapists. Any child will enjoy such tasks.

Lip development

Articulation gymnastics

Articulation gymnastics is designed to develop the tongue and lips. To begin to pronounce words correctly and clearly, you cannot do without training the muscles of the speech organs. It is important to understand what position your lips, cheeks and tongue should be in, and to learn how to maintain this position.

Performing such gymnastics is useless without using a mirror. The baby should observe the location of the tongue. To really consolidate its correct position, each exercise must be repeated several times.

For your information! If you devote 5-7 minutes to exercise every day, then excellent results will be noticeable very soon.

Classes with a speech therapist for children 5 years old to develop phonemic hearing

Such hearing is necessary for successful learning to read and write. Phonemic awareness refers to the ability to recognize a specific sound in a given word. Playing games designed to develop phonemic awareness is recommended with children of all ages: from a toddler who is just trying to start speaking to a preschooler.

• “Guess who?” You need to tell the child who makes what sounds: a fly buzzes - “zhzhzh”, the wind howls - “oooh”, etc. Then he must name himself who pronounces this or that sound.
• In the game “Repeat”, the adult says combinations of vowel sounds, and the child repeats after him.

An interesting activity in the middle group on speech development

Finger gymnastics

The most important and difficult thing about learning at home is the child’s interest. Finger exercises will help with this, which will also develop fine motor skills. This is not an easy task for parents. Many people make mistakes already at the first stage of training, trying to sit down a restless baby. This is not necessary, because the parent teaches by playing with his fingers. The baby can continue jumping on the bed, playing with toys, doing his favorite activities and doing the exercises shown to him. With this approach, the child will grasp everything that is given to him.

Building a Home Lesson

Speech therapy exercises and speech gymnastics should be performed at home; this will help consolidate the skills and abilities acquired from the defectologist and make speech clearer and more understandable. It is best to conduct them in a playful way so as not to tire the baby - this will help him not to lose interest, not get tired, and enjoy a useful pastime.

The first stage of any lesson (unless the speech therapist suggests otherwise) is articulatory gymnastics, which will prepare the speech apparatus for further work and help stretch the tongue and ligaments. While doing the exercises, kids simultaneously train those muscles that are actively involved in the process of pronouncing sounds.

All exercises are done while sitting, preferably in front of a mirror, so that the baby can control himself. Each is repeated several times, depending on the individual preparation of the child.

Parents can perform a large number of exercises with children 5-6 years old, helping them cope with speech problems.

• Pronounce pure phrases that contain both the problematic sound and sounds similar to it. For example, when setting the sound [s], you can use the following: “My sister and I brought sausage to the owl in the forest.” There are many words in this pure phrase with this sound.
• Pronouncing rhymes with problematic sounds.

To improve the pronunciation of the sound [r], the following poem is suitable:

Ra-ra-ra - the kids are frolicking!

Ro-ro-ro - we're giving away good things!

Ru-ru-ru - we draw a kangaroo!

Ry-ry-ry - the dog crawled out of the hole!

In speech therapy encyclopedias you can get acquainted with a large number of different rhymes for setting each sound and choose those that are suitable for a particular child. This is the general structure of the lesson.

Articulation gymnastics is the best warm-up

You should invite your child to perform exercises aimed at training various muscle groups. Their description is presented in the table.

You shouldn’t include all the exercises in your workout; you need to choose 2-3 of them and work them out properly, but at the same time carefully ensure that all muscle groups are involved during the week. The easiest way is to create a lesson plan for seven days, in which you describe on which day which exercise will be performed.

Each exercise from the complex, which suggests fixing a certain position, is first performed for 5 seconds, gradually the duration increases to 30. The parent can count out loud, this will help the child remember the numbers.

Speech development exercises for practicing at home

It is best to develop a child’s speech at 5 years old through reading. It is useful to memorize poems, proverbs and sayings, solve riddles and read nursery rhymes. It is important that the child finds what is read to him interesting and understandable. The meaning of new words, sayings and popular expressions needs to be explained.

Children always copy the pronunciation and intonation of adults. In order for a child to speak correctly, parents must monitor the quality of their own speech - correctly place stress, inflect nouns, etc. The child’s vocabulary also depends on that of the parents. It is useful to observe natural phenomena together and discuss what is happening, read books and come up with entertaining stories together.

Didactic games

You can increase your preschooler’s vocabulary by playing entertaining games:

1. Select antonyms and synonyms. An adult names a word, and the child first comes up with a word that is similar in meaning, and then the opposite.
2. What kinds of objects are there? You can invite your child to think about what kind of cup there is (white, red, big, small, round, tall, wide, etc.). The same task can be created for adjectives - what is sweet (sweets, tea, pear).
3. The adult names the characteristics of the object, and the child guesses from the description what it is about (round, red, sweet, edible, juicy - an apple).
4. Training in declensions in numbers and cases (one apple - many apples, a cat sitting - cats sitting).

Thematic sets of pictures are used for development. You can show your child several cards, from which you need to choose one extra one (sparrow, magpie, swallow, dog). It is necessary for the child to explain his choice.

Didactic game for children 5-6 years old.

Didactic games can be carried out in a group of children. To do this you will need a ball or any soft toy. An adult names a generalizing concept (birds). Children take turns naming the birds they know and passing the ball around in a circle. The one who could not name the bird leaves the circle.

A child can be taught to compose coherent sentences from words arranged in random order. An adult calls them randomly (sparrow, branch, sits, on), children compose a ready-made phrase (sparrow sits on a branch).

Development of phonemic hearing

Phonemic hearing is the ability to recognize sounds (phonemes), i.e.:

• identify this or that sound by ear;
• distinguish different concepts that have the same phonemes (cat - current);
• distinguish similar names in which one sound is different (spoon - cat);
• establish the order of sounds in words.

Development of phonetic hearing.

To develop this skill in preschool children, games and exercises are used:

1. What did it sound like? An adult puts several sounding toys on the table. It could be a pipe, bell, rattle, drum, etc. The child is allowed to touch and listen to what sounds each object makes. Then he turns away and determines by ear what it sounds.
2. Find out by voice. The child turns his back and guesses which family member called him. First, the caller says the name. Then the game becomes more complicated - instead of the name, a short sound signal is pronounced - hey, hey.
3. Definition of onomatopoeia - the child must understand what animal the speaker is imitating (imitation of a dog barking, a cat meowing, a cow mooing, etc.)

During the process, the speaker can change the timbre of his voice, volume and intonation.

Finger gymnastics

Exercises for the fingers are carried out in the form of a game and are accompanied by funny rhymes or songs. A light massage is performed first. First, stroke and rub each child’s finger from tip to base, then massage the entire hand. First, the adult does this himself, then you can teach the child to self-massage his hands.

The following exercises are performed:

1. Flexion and extension of fingers. First, the adult shows how to perform the movement. Then watches the preschooler perform it independently.
2. Static charging - use your fingers and hands to depict any animals or objects: a dog, a bird, a hare, a pistol, etc. You can show your child the tasks on your own hands or let them look at a card with a picture.
3. An adult reads a short poem, while the child’s hands “stage” its content. This type of gymnastics combines static and dynamic exercises - objects or characters are depicted with the help of brushes and their action is conveyed.

To improve coordination and fine motor skills, you can perform simple exercises:

• rolling objects of different sizes between fingers;
• picking up pencils or sticks from the table with one hand;
• modeling;
• lacing;
• drawing and coloring pictures;
• weaving from wire or thread.
• stringing beads on wire or cord.

Thanks to such activities, the muscles of the hands develop. This stimulates the speech apparatus and intellectual development of the preschooler.

Articulation gymnastics

There are sets of exercises for the development of the speech apparatus of children.

You can improve the pronunciation of hissing and whistling sounds with the help of speech therapy gymnastics:

1. “Fence” - the child bares his teeth and holds his lips in a smile for up to 10 seconds.
2. “Stroke” - on a count from 1 to 10, stretch out your lips with a tube and hold it in this state.
3. “Fence-tube” - the position of the lips alternates for 10 seconds.
4. “Window” - the lips are held in a smile, while the mouth calmly opens and closes.
5. Relaxation of the tongue muscles - the child is asked to smile and open his mouth slightly. The tongue needs to be relaxed, made wide and placed on the lower lip. Lightly slapping your outstretched tongue with your lips, pronounce the sounds “five-five-five” for 5 seconds.
6. “Spatula” - relax your tongue and hold it in a calm state for 5-10 seconds.
7. “Football player” - stretch out your lips with a tube and blow on a ball of paper or cotton wool, driving it into a “gate” of 2 cubes. There is no need to puff out your cheeks. The distance to the gate gradually increases.

Articulation gymnastics.

If a child speaks the sound P poorly, additional exercises are performed:

1. “Painter” - the tongue rises, stretching the hyoid ligament. Open your mouth slightly in a smile, stroke the hard palate with the tip of your tongue from front to back. The tongue does not peek out from behind the teeth.
2. “Brushing your teeth” - run the tip of your tongue along the inside of your upper teeth. Keep your mouth slightly open.
3. “Mushroom” - open your mouth wide, make your tongue wide and stick its back to the roof of your mouth.

In addition to training individual sounds, exercises are performed to improve breathing.

Variety of forms and games

To prevent a preschooler from getting bored of repeating the same thing several times, you should think through an unusual game scenario and give him different tasks:

• not just pronounce words, but make rhythmic movements with your feet or hands in time with them;
• “teach” the toy a simple phrase or rhyme, show how to pronounce the text correctly;
• pronounce the text, imagining yourself as a fox or a bunny, make appropriate facial expressions and gestures.

You can make a speech therapy session even more exciting if you dress the baby in the costume of the animal being depicted.

Rhymes and sayings can not only be pronounced, but also sung, coming up with a suitable motive for them.

You can stimulate the development of fine motor skills, which are directly related to the speech center, by performing finger gymnastics - putting special dolls on your fingers, creating dramatizations, while simultaneously pronouncing poems and phrases with the sound being practiced. For example, when working on the phoneme [p], you can offer a preschooler a pig finger puppet and ask him to grunt.

To prevent your child from getting tired, every 5-10 minutes of class you should take a break and do breathing exercises. For example, “Dandelion” - take a deep breath through your nose, as if inhaling the aroma of flowers, and then exhale through your mouth, as if blowing on a fluffy dandelion.

What is speech therapy and what are its methods?

Speech therapy literally translated from Greek means “speech education.” To summarize, we can say that this is the science of the development of speech skills, the causes, mechanisms, symptoms of speech disorders and methods of their prevention and correction.

There are many tools in the arsenal of speech therapy. Among them:

• articulation gymnastics;
• activities to develop fine motor skills;
• exercises on onomatopoeia, hearing development, logorhythmics;
• repeated repetition of verbal constructions;
• breathing exercises and voice exercises;
• exercises for individual sounds.

In each specific case, the methods are individual. The tasks are different - to prevent, correct, restore, but the goal of the classes is one - correct-sounding speech.

In a broader sense, the goal of speech therapy is to educate a person with speech disorders and help him with social adaptation.

Now let's move on to the description of speech therapy exercises.

Cognitive activities

Games for speech development should also be educational in nature. But parents are required to be creative and prepare.

There are several options for such games.

• Select in advance several cards with illustrations that show words with problematic sounds (these can be animals, birds, vegetables, household items), and ask the child to name them, give a brief description, and add to his story. This will help improve your pronunciation and gain new information.
• “Take a guess.” The adult hides some object, the name of which contains the sound being practiced (for example, if it is the phoneme [r], then you can hide a toy giraffe), after which he begins to tell the baby a number of characteristics: this is an animal, with a long neck, spotted skin. The child’s task is to guess the animal and try to pronounce its name.
• Working with pictures. The parent selects an illustration and thinks of an object on it that has a problematic sound in its name, after which he begins to describe it. The child’s task is to understand what it is about, show it in the picture and say the name.

With the help of such exercises, preschoolers not only additionally practice pronouncing individual sounds, but also learn new information about the world around them.

The importance of speech therapy lessons and their continuation at home should not be underestimated, since 5-6 years is the time when a child can still solve most of his speech problems and start studying at school along with other children. If time is lost, then there is a risk that he will have a lot of difficulties in the future, including various complexes and self-doubt.

What is speech breathing

Speech breathing is the basis of speech. It can be compared to the power that a person uses when exhaling to produce sounds. Speech breathing can be controlled and trained. It affects how strong, loud and clear a person's voice is.

Breathing is important for speech

Development of speech breathing

If a person is not able to regulate breathing for life, then speech breathing can be regulated. To develop it and better control it, you need to do special exercises. The system of these exercises is aimed at teaching the child to inhale a portion of air sufficient to pronounce three phrases. Then (also through the mouth) inhale an additional portion of air to pronounce the following phrases.

Exercises for the development of speech breathing in preschool educational institutions and at home:

• blow on a dandelion (or imitate it);
• blow bubbles;
• blow on a turntable;
• inflate balloons;
• blow a whistle;
• play the pipe;
• whistle;
• blow and move the balloon;
• blow and roll a simple pencil on the table;
• exhaling through your mouth, melt the snowball on your hand.

Voice depends on breathing

It is necessary to increase the duration of exercises gradually so that the child’s body has time to adapt. The workout begins with a small number of repetitions with one approach, then increasing the load. If logorhythmics is performed regularly, then articulation will improve day by day.

If a child stutters or, when speaking longer phrases, begins to swallow them, rushes and has the feeling that he is suffocating, then most likely his respiratory apparatus is poorly developed. This may be a feature of the body, be a consequence of insufficient training or the presence of diseases (for example, sinusitis or adenoids).

Note! It is necessary to strengthen the baby’s body, improve health, determine the source of the problem and regularly train the breathing apparatus. Singing, which strengthens the entire respiratory system, helps to cope perfectly with this problem.

An interesting activity in the middle group on speech development

In order for the exhalation to be long and forceful, it is necessary to perform an articulatory set of exercises as a basis:

• Inhale air through your mouth with a barely noticeable smile on your lips, and also exhale through your mouth, accompanying this with sound.
• Do the exercise “Hills and ravines”. His scheme is for the child to round his belly while inhaling air. The stomach should become convex.

Note! The correct method of execution is when the shoulders do not rise when inhaling. On the exhale, on the contrary, the stomach should be drawn in as much as possible.