The purity of a preschooler's speech is a guarantee of his future student victories. It's no secret that children who have problems with the pronunciation of sounds learn worse. In addition, they are more withdrawn, because the communication, which they have to go to with their peers, takes too much of their strength.
To be understood, such children need to try, and therefore it is at the age of 5-6 that complexes begin to form that can accompany a person for the rest of his life. Parents can help the child themselves, at home.
In this material, we will present some of the most effective speech therapy classes and speech development techniques for children 5-6 years old.
Diagnosing violations - when does a child need help?
Quite often, parents who notice certain distortions of words and fuzzy pronunciation in their baby mistakenly believe that everything will work out by itself with age.
There is some truth in this - the speech apparatus of preschool children is imperfect, it is in the process of formation. A number of problems with the pronunciation of sounds indeed children manage to "outgrow". However, it is irresponsible to hope for this, especially since not all speech defects correct themselves with age.
At the age of 5-6 years, a child may experience various disorders, which will require a different approach and the help of different specialists:
Dislalia
With this disorder, the child's hearing is not impaired, there are no pronounced problems with the speech apparatus, but he mispronounces consonants.
Most often, children confuse the sounds "W", "F", "L", "R". A child can replace the sound in a word with a similar one (mountain-bark), can skip a sound altogether, can pronounce it incorrectly - deafen or ring out.
Stuttering
In preschool age, such a defect occurs most often. It manifests itself in a halt in pronunciation and difficulty in further pronunciation.
There are many reasons that can cause stuttering - from neurological problems to psycho-emotional disorders. At 5-6 years of age, the speech defect is very pronounced, it cannot be confused with anything else.
Nasty
Such preschoolers are said to be "gundos". Sometimes it is quite difficult to understand what the child is saying, since the pronunciation "in the nose" distorts even the simple sounds of the native language.
Often the reason for this defect lies in ENT pathologyfor example, nasal congestion due to adenoids. However, even after treatment with an otolaryngologist, the child can continue to speak for some time out of habit "in the nose". He needs developing speech therapy classes.
Underdevelopment of speech
With normal development, a child in preschool age does not have any difficulties in making up sentences, even long ones, in which words are used in different cases and declensions.
When speech is underdeveloped, the child has difficulties with the "linking" of individual words in a large logical chain, and there are also problems with the endings of even well-known words. Often this is due to the fact that parents and representatives of the older generation when communicating with a child themselves deliberately distorted words, used many diminutive suffixes (a cup, a plate, a shoe), and also "lisp".
Delayed speech development
Such a violation can be caused by insufficient communication with adults, lack of developmental communication, contact with peers, and can also be a consequence or symptom of neurological disorders, pathologies of the central nervous system.
In addition to home speech therapy classes, it is advisable for a child to visit a neurologist, a speech therapist, and take part in group sessions.
Homework for pronunciation of sounds
Classes at home have some advantages over classes with a speech therapist in a polyclinic. At home, the child is familiar and understandable, there is no need to be ashamed of strangers. In a playful way, homework gives no less results than correction in the office of a professional speech therapist.
Unfortunately, speech defects in children in the modern world are more common than in the childhood of their parents. The point is in the abundance of information, which largely replaces the need for communication for children from an early age.
Instead of playing with a friend or girlfriend on the playground, children prefer to spend their free time from the kindergarten on the Internet, playing with a tablet or computer, watching numerous cartoons on TV. All this does not contribute to the development of speech in any way.
At home, parents can combine speech therapy classes with preparation for school. It is quite simple to do this, it is enough to combine exercises for pronunciation of sounds and syllables with games that train memory, memorize poems and prose, and assimilate new information about the world around the baby.
The development of fine motor skills while learning to draw and write also contributes to the improvement of the speech apparatus.
Classes at home are not only educational games and exercises for correcting speech defects, but also pleasant communication and interaction between the child and adults. It will undoubtedly benefit all participants in this process.
Exercises and games to develop speech at home
To prepare the child's pens for writing, and at the same time to improve the work of his speech apparatus, finger games will help. For them, you can use ready-made sets of finger characters - heroes of your favorite fairy tales.
You can compose your own fairy tales and stories on the go, and this will help your child develop imagination as well. It is good if the performance "on the fingers" is accompanied by learned verses with elements of pure talk.
It is better to choose pure phrases not only for a problematic sound that the child does not really manage to pronounce, but also for other complex sounds too. For example, if a toddler has problems with sibilants or the sound "L", it is worth choosing pure phrases that will require the baby to accurately pronounce these particular sounds:
And we have a commotion - a thistle has grown,
To calm the commotion, weed the thistle!
For problems with the "C" sound, the following phrasing is suitable:
Su-su, su-su-su, this is how an owl lives in the forest.
My sister and I brought sausages to the owl in the forest.
Sa-sa-sa, sa-sa-sa, a wasp flew to us,
A fox came running to us, a dragonfly visited.
In case of problems with the pronunciation of the sound "P", the following rhyme will help:
Ra-ra-ra, it's time for us to go home
Ru-ru-ru, let's draw a kangaroo,
Ro-ro-ro, the rain is dripping into the bucket
Ry-ry-ry, tigers jumped from the mountain.
You can also compose pure phrases on your own, the main thing is to put the problematic sound at the beginning and end of the phrase in such a way that it is not possible to replace it with a consonant other sound or omit it altogether. It's not difficult at all.
Our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were also familiar with the most successful example of a clean phrase. These are the familiar "lyuli-lyuli":
Lyuli-lyuli-lyuli, ghouls flew in,
Gulyushki-guli, cute lapuli,
Oh lyuli-lyuli-lyuli, we made a wreath for them.
Many "folk" rhymes have an excellent speech therapy effect - "Geese-geese, ha-ha-ha" and others, which are familiar to everyone from childhood.
You can build a lesson according to the following scheme:
- Rhythmic movements to the beat of a song or phrase. Invite your child to walk in a circle, walking exclusively in time with the poem. Then the steps can be changed to small jumps in time.
- Breathing exercises. After an active five minutes, invite the preschooler to breathe deeply. In this case, he must inhale through the nose, and exhale through the mouth in a thin stream.
- Emotional "coloring". After breathing exercises, ask your child to repeat the emotional language. Let his facial expressions and gestures show a fox, an owl, a wasp, geese, etc. Help your child, think of funny images that he will like to parody.
- Songs. And now you can sing rhymes and phrases. If it is impossible to put them even on simple music, as our great-grandmothers did when singing "Lyuli-lyuli-guli" at the cradle, then you can specially learn a pure-speech song. Such songs can be found on numerous video lessons of speech therapy classes on the Internet.
- The next step can be finger games. Ask the child to say a phrase or rhyme again and demonstrate its plot on the fingers (the index and middle ones, placed on the pads, can depict a walking person, and the flapping of the palms folded in a criss-cross pattern demonstrates the flapping of the wings of geese, etc.
- After the above exercises, you can move on to quieter activities - logical and cognitive. Lay out pictures of animals and insects that were used in rhymes on the table in front of the preschooler. Ask to show and name those who have the sound “R” in their names (fish, cancer, crow), and then ask to show and name those whose names do not have “Z” (dog, owl, cat). This exercise will help your child learn to read faster.
- At the end of the lesson, have your child repeat the new poem and individual words after you. Do this several times, clearly, remembering to praise the child. The next lesson should start with this, a new rhyme or phrase-mongering for a preschooler.
Gradually introduce tongue twisters into circulation ("The cap is not in Kolpakov style, the bell is not in Kolokolov style", "Sasha walked along the highway and sucked drying", "There is grass outside, there is firewood on the grass", etc.).
Articulation gymnastics and pronunciation training
Make special exercises for the child's speech apparatus daily. It is best to start the next lesson with her. It will prepare the muscles, ligaments, tongue and lips for the pronunciation of sounds that are difficult for a preschooler.
Gymnastics is aimed at training the chewing, swallowing and mimic muscles, it is they who jointly participate in the pronunciation process, make speech legible and understandable.
In the process of pronunciation, not only the lips and tongue are involved, but also the respiratory organs, chest, shoulders, and vocal cords. Consider this during gymnastics and try to use all the components of voice formation equally.
Gymnastics should be done while sitting, it is advisable to carry out 2-3 sessions per day, while each should take no more than 5 minutes, during which time the child should complete 2-3 exercises from the complex.
Previously, parents will have to master all the exercises on their own in order to be able to show the preschooler and achieve clear and clean performance. To develop the lips, it is worth doing simple exercises, such as keeping the lips smiling, with the teeth completely closed.
It is worth starting with 30 seconds and gradually holding the smile for 1-2 minutes. It also effectively develops articulation by folding the lips with a tube. The principle is the same - first the lip tube should be held for 20-30 seconds, but gradually the duration of the exercise increases.
It will be a little more difficult to fold the lips into a bagel, while the teeth close tightly, and the lips are pulled out with a tube, but open, so you can see the teeth. Gradually, tasks become more difficult and add movement, which should give mobility to the lips. So, the lips in the tube can be moved in a circle, left and right, up and down, depicting an elephant's trunk or a piglet's piglet.
Elongated lips, folded like a fish, close and open. This is how an entertaining conversation of fish at the bottom of the sea turns out. And if you exhale through your mouth, making your lips vibrate from the air stream, you get a very funny angry horse that snorts just like a real one.
A very fun game will help to strengthen the child's lips, in which the child needs to draw something in the air with a pencil between his lips. The adult's task is to guess what the child has depicted.
To train your cheeks, you can play balloons by inflating your cheeks and holding them in that state for as long as possible. In this case, you can make funny faces. If you inflate the right cheek and then the left cheek in turn, you get a hamster, and if you pull both cheeks inside the mouth and hold them in this position, you get a hungry and funny gopher.
You can practice your tongue by portraying a dog. To do this, stick out the tongue and put it loosely on the lower lip. You can combine this exercise with short breaths in and out of the mouth. If you stick out the tense tip of your tongue, you can play mosquitoes, and moving your tongue up and down and right and left, as well as bending it into a tube, will not only help you spend a five-minute free time with pleasure, but also train your tongue muscles.
Jaw training can be a pleasure if the baby, together with his mother, tries to portray a monkey, “hanging” the jaw down as much as possible, or an angry lion, straining his lower jaw in a grin and emitting a characteristic growl.
Tips for parents
You should start home speech therapy classes only after the child has been examined by specialists - an ENT specialist, a neurologist and a speech therapist. They will help you find the true causes of the speech defect and suggest some techniques that will be aimed at eliminating a specific defect in this child, taking into account his anatomical and other features. A speech therapy examination will help to establish in which part of the speech apparatus a clamp or other obstacle occurs.
You should work with your child daily. The baby should be able to constantly practice new movements and pronunciation. At first, a preschooler may complain of fatigue, because the correct setting of the speech apparatus for him again. However, gradually it will become natural, everything will work out without much effort, the normal setting of the lips and tongue will become the norm.
Parents should initiate the beginning of the lesson only when the child is well rested, has eaten, is in a good mood, is ready to play and study. Through force, through compulsion, speech therapy classes are not carried out, because they will be of little use if the child treats them as a duty.
Mom and Dad need to be patient, because the process of correcting speech defects is quite long and painstaking.
Do not scold your child if something goes wrong. But always strive to perform the exercise accurately. To do this, you can help the baby - with your hands, a spatula, a teaspoon. The tongue and lips should be in the correct position.
Do not hesitate to ask the experts for advice. It is also advisable to familiarize yourself with the literature on speech therapy. For this age, we can recommend the book by N. Teremkova "Speech therapy homework for children 5-7 years old", "Lessons of a speech therapist - games for the development of speech" by E. Kosinova and "Cheerful logo rhythm" by E. Zheleznova. If you want to help your child cope with a speech impediment, you should start by reading these books.
In the next video, you will find even more information about the development of speech in a child 5-6 years old.
