What are the best speech therapy exercises for kids at home?

Pick one target sound, then work up a ladder: hearing the difference, making the sound alone, then words, phrases, sentences and conversation. Five to ten minutes daily, aiming for dozens of correct repetitions. The single most effective addition for a child with few words is saying back what they said plus one extra word.

How long should speech practice be for a child?

Five to ten minutes a day, and stopped while your child is still enjoying it. Short and frequent beats long and occasional — a fifteen-minute session that ends in a battle usually costs you the next few days, which more than wipes out the extra time.

What order should speech sounds be taught in?

By developmental age rather than by how noticeable the error is. P, B, M and N arrive early; K, G, F and T follow; S, L, SH and CH sit in the middle; R and TH are typically last, often not settling until six or seven. Every sound page on this site lists the age range most children master that sound.

Can I do speech therapy at home without a therapist?

You can do the practice at home, and that practice is where most of the change happens. What you cannot do at home is the assessment — telling an articulation problem from a phonological one, or spotting a hearing or medical cause. If your child has never been assessed and you are worried, start there.

How many repetitions does my child need?

Dozens of correct productions per session, which is why the activity format matters so much. A game that yields fifty repetitions in five minutes beats a worksheet that yields eight. If most attempts are wrong, drop back a rung — repetitions of an error are worse than no practice.

My child gets upset during practice. What should I change?

Almost always the level, not the child. Upset usually means they are being asked for something they cannot yet produce, so drop a rung — from sentences back to words, or from words back to the sound alone — and end the session early on a success. Attach the word to a game so saying it buys them a turn rather than earning a correction.

Guide

Speech therapy exercises for kids

Almost everything a speech-language pathologist does with a young child comes down to a small number of moves, repeated a lot. None of them need equipment and none of them are hard to learn. What follows is the set worth doing at home, arranged by what each one is actually for — because doing the right exercise at the wrong level is the most common reason home practice goes nowhere.

The short answer

Work on one sound at a time, for five to ten minutes daily, moving up the ladder from the sound alone → words → phrases → sentences → conversation. Aim for dozens of correct repetitions per session, not perfect ones. Skip blowing, straw and tongue-wagging exercises entirely — the evidence says non-speech mouth exercises do not improve speech sounds.

Before you start: pick one target

If a speech-language pathologist has named a sound, use that and ignore everything else for now. If nobody has, choose by age rather than by whichever error annoys you most — a four-year-old saying "wabbit" is on schedule, because R typically does not settle until six or seven, while a four-year-old who cannot make K is genuinely behind.

Every sound page on this site states the age range most children master that sound, so you can check before you spend six weeks practising something your child was always going to grow into.

One sound, several weeks. Rotating targets feels productive and produces nothing.
Same slot every day. After bath, before the story. A fixed time survives a busy week.
Five to ten minutes. Short and daily beats long and weekly, reliably.
Stop while they still want to play. This is the single most useful rule on the page.

Group 1 — exercises for hearing the difference

A child who cannot hear that their production differs from yours has nothing to aim at. These come first and are usually skipped.

1Right or wrong? You say the word, sometimes correctly and sometimes with your child's error, and they judge you. No pressure on their own speech, and it sharpens the ear fast. Children love catching an adult out.
2Same or different? Say two words — "sun / thun" — and ask whether they matched. Start obviously different, then narrow the gap.
3Find the odd one out. Three words, one with the target sound. This moves listening into a game and works well in the car.

Group 2 — exercises for making the sound

Only once your child can hear the difference. The goal here is one clear production in isolation — that is all.

1Show the mouth. Sit side by side at a mirror so they can see your tongue and lips and their own at the same time. Every sound page here has written mouth-position instructions for exactly this.
2Stretch the sound out. A long snake hiss for S, a long pirate growl for R. Stretched sounds are far easier to feel than sounds inside a word.
3Use touch and feel. Hand on the throat to feel voicing buzz for Z and V; a finger in front of the mouth to feel the thin cold stream of air for S. Children fix a sound faster when they can feel what is wrong.
4Borrow a sound they already have. T is a step towards S; "ee" helps set the tongue for R. Getting there from a sound they can already make beats trying to build it from nothing.

Group 3 — exercises for building it into speech

This is where most home practice stalls: the sound is fine alone and vanishes in real talking. The ladder below is the fix, and each rung needs its own repetitions.

1Sound alone, several times in a row, cleanly.
2Start of a word — this is where a new sound should live first. Every sound page here lists practice words grouped short → two-syllable → longer.
3Middle and end of words, which are usually harder and often missed entirely.
4Short phrases — two or three words. The sound page phrase lists are built for this rung.
5Sentences, where the sound has to survive alongside everything else the mouth is doing.
6Real conversation, prompted at first: ten minutes a day where you gently flag the sound, then let it go for the rest of the day.

Group 4 — exercises for children who are not on sounds yet

If your child has few words, sound drills are the wrong level entirely. These build language instead, and they are what an SLP would coach you to do.

1Say it back plus one word. They say "juice", you say "want juice". Not a correction — the next size up, every time.
2Wait longer than feels natural. Count five silently. Most adults fill the gap before the child has assembled an answer.
3Offer a choice out loud. "Milk or water?" gives them the words and a reason to use one.
4Narrate what they are already doing. Short, simple sentences about the thing in their hands, with no question attached and nothing demanded back.

The exercise to skip

Blowing bubbles, blowing whistles, straw drills, tongue push-ups, cheek puffing — these are marketed everywhere as speech exercises. The research on non-speech oral-motor exercises does not support them for improving speech sound production, and professional guidance has moved away from them for that purpose. The muscles used to blow a whistle are not doing the job that speech requires.

They are enjoyable, and they are harmless as play. They are just not practice. If your ten minutes a day is going on bubbles, that time is not buying you speech.

How to know it is working

Progress in speech is slow and jagged, so judging it by ear from one evening to the next is unreliable — you will conclude either that nothing is happening or that it is fixed, and usually both in the same week.

Two things that do work: record thirty seconds of your child talking on the same day each week and compare a month apart, and track the rung of the ladder rather than the quality. "Correct in words, falls apart in sentences" is a much more useful description than "a bit better".

Our app does the same thing automatically — it listens to each attempt, scores it, and shows that sound's trend over weeks. That is the part that is genuinely hard to do by ear, especially for a sound like R where adults often cannot tell a good attempt from a near miss.

When to stop practising and call someone

Book an appointment rather than trying harder at home if your child is past the typical age for a sound and it has not appeared, if people outside the family regularly cannot understand them, if they are starting to avoid talking or getting frustrated, or if they have lost words they previously used. That last one warrants a prompt appointment at any age.

Home practice makes therapy work faster. It does not replace the assessment that tells you what to practise.

Practice these sounds

Free word lists, mouth-position guides and games — no app needed.

R Sound S Sound L Sound TH Sound K Sound SH Sound CH Sound

Help Me Talk is a practice app, not a diagnosis or a replacement for a licensed speech-language pathologist. If you are worried about your child’s speech, talk to your doctor or an SLP — this app is for the practice in between.

Questions parents ask

What are the best speech therapy exercises for kids at home?: Pick one target sound, then work up a ladder: hearing the difference, making the sound alone, then words, phrases, sentences and conversation. Five to ten minutes daily, aiming for dozens of correct repetitions. The single most effective addition for a child with few words is saying back what they said plus one extra word.
How long should speech practice be for a child?: Five to ten minutes a day, and stopped while your child is still enjoying it. Short and frequent beats long and occasional — a fifteen-minute session that ends in a battle usually costs you the next few days, which more than wipes out the extra time.
Do mouth exercises like blowing bubbles help speech?: Not for speech sounds. Research on non-speech oral-motor exercises — blowing, straws, tongue push-ups — does not support them as a way to improve speech sound production, and professional guidance has moved away from using them for that. They remain legitimate for some feeding and swallowing goals when an SLP has prescribed them.
What order should speech sounds be taught in?: By developmental age rather than by how noticeable the error is. P, B, M and N arrive early; K, G, F and T follow; S, L, SH and CH sit in the middle; R and TH are typically last, often not settling until six or seven. Every sound page on this site lists the age range most children master that sound.
Can I do speech therapy at home without a therapist?: You can do the practice at home, and that practice is where most of the change happens. What you cannot do at home is the assessment — telling an articulation problem from a phonological one, or spotting a hearing or medical cause. If your child has never been assessed and you are worried, start there.
How many repetitions does my child need?: Dozens of correct productions per session, which is why the activity format matters so much. A game that yields fifty repetitions in five minutes beats a worksheet that yields eight. If most attempts are wrong, drop back a rung — repetitions of an error are worse than no practice.
My child gets upset during practice. What should I change?: Almost always the level, not the child. Upset usually means they are being asked for something they cannot yet produce, so drop a rung — from sentences back to words, or from words back to the sound alone — and end the session early on a success. Attach the word to a game so saying it buys them a turn rather than earning a correction.

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Last updated 6 August 2026.