More Oral-Motor Exercises - Snacktime

More speech and oral motor info…

· Snack time is an excellent time to improve oral motor skills.

· Have child hold a thin pretzel or cracker in your lips. Now hold a fat pretzel in your lips. Can you hold it while I count to 5?

· Bit small pieces from a large cracker or long pretzel. Importance is to learn good biting skills.

· Take tiny bites from pretzel stick. Place stick in different places to practice biting with different teeth.

· Drink from a variety of cups. Try a different cup or mug every day. Sippies are great when a mess can't be made, but it is important to use regular cups every day to develop oral motor skills necessary for speech and sound production.

· Lick foods (pudding, yogurt) from lips.

· Drink through a straw. Drink pudding, milkshake or applesauce through straw.

· Hold a popsicle or lollipop about an inch form mouth and stretch tongue to lick it.

· Blow on warm food.

Eat a different texture every day.

· Smooth - pudding, applesauce

· Crunchy - crackers, pretzels

· Chewy - raisins, fruit snacks

· Lumpy - yogurt with fruit

Oral-Motor Exercises

Got this info from E's speech therapist...

A little mouth work every day will help a child learn about lips, teeth and the tongue and how they all work together to make sounds and words.

Keep this short and fun - a little each day and save some for later...

• Let's look at those beautiful clean teeth! Say cheese!!
• Can you make your teeth go bite-bite-bite??
• Open your mouth really wide. Say Ahhhhh
• Close your lips very tight. Say Mmmmm
• Make your lips a little circle. Say Ooooo
• Stick your tongue out. Say Blah
• Make your tongue "dance" all around.
• Can your tongue go to the corner of your mouth? Try the other corner.
• Pretend you have ice cream on your lips - lick the bottom and top.
• Bounce your lips and say pop-pop-pop
• Blow kisses in the mirror
• Kiss the mirror and look at lip prints
• Blow Raspberries
• Make funny faces with lots of mouth movement

Speech Therapy

As you may know, Ev is having a speech therapy session every week at our home. I thought I'd share some of the tips and tricks the therapist has given me...

- Children must master sounds to gain words. Therefore, it is important to always be making sounds with them - animal noises, sound effects, all kinds of noises. This is not something that comes natural for me.

- Around 2 kids should be given options as much as possible. When preparing dinner, ask if the child wants the yellow or pink plate. They should be given choices for as much as possible. Just make sure you will be comfortable with what they choose - this might be especially important if you are letting them pick their clothes.

- Blowing whistles and bubbles is not just fun, but helps them develop critical muscles and mouth positions that are necessary for speaking. You might find when they fist use whistles they are biting them, so try to have them use their lips rather than teeth. I have a bag of different whistles and both of the girls just love blowing them. You can buy lots of cheap whistles at the $1 store or Target in the "goodie bag" section.

- The ability to make a fast, accurate decision is important. Take a bag and place in it shapes or colors or animals or whatever... Puzzle pieces work very well. Have your child sit in front of you. Pull out 2 pieces and hold them up - ask the child to point to the dog. If s/he points to the cow, pull the pieces back and ask them to point to the dog. This should help them make fast, accurate choices. My girls just love this game.

- Playdoh, stamps, stickers, crayons, markers, pens -- kids just love any kind of crafts. But, don't just plunk them down and let them play on their own. At least some of the time sit with him/her and talk about what they are doing - have sound effects and make it as much fun as possible.

- Play I Spy with the things around you. Ask your child to bring you the yellow sock or whatever. This will be fun for them and will also help them focus and scout things out.