Need a fun (and “speechy”) activity for summer?! Look no further than BUBBLES! Bubble activities are exciting for children of all ages and can be a useful tool for therapy.
Oral Motor Exercise: Although this topic can be controversial, one can not debate that through bubble blowing activities, children are stimulating the muscles used to round their lips. Rounding the lips supports the production of the /w/ sound.
Airflow/Breath Support: Proper breath control is important for a number of everyday functions including speaking, singing, eating, playing instruments, swimming under water, and relaxing. We inhale, take in, air to fill our lungs and then exhale, release, air when we speak. Inhaling and exhaling is an automatic process. However, some children have difficulty maintaining breath support which will impact their ability to perform some everyday functions. Blowing bubbles is one activities therapists can use to help children practice breath support and control. Other activities include blowing a whistle, blowing up a balloon, and blowing a pinwheel.
Speech Production & Language Development: As I mentioned before, blowing bubbles is a great activity for lip rounding which supports sounds like /w/ but it doesn’t stop there. Blowing bubbles provides a great opportunity for language development and speech production practice. Some target vocabulary includes bubble, bubbles, pop, big, small, round, blow, more, again, open, close, up, down, in, out, wet, dry, counting numbers, and sequence markers (first, then, etc.).
Check out these great sites for bubble recipes and additional activities!
- http://www.beyondthechalkboard.com/activities/bubbles/
- http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/backyard-bubbles
Bring bubbles to the speech room with bubble themes activities! One way my students are getting in to the summer spirit is with Alphabet Bubbles: Phonemic Awareness. We are having fun using bubbles to identify, segment, and blend phonemes without the mess.
Enjoy!
Very nicely put together.
Hi. we have been using bubbles for so many years with my daughter. She has dyspraxia and sensory processing disorder. Due to the dyspraxia, she did not talk until she was 5. She has been in speech since she was 2.
I offer out my website for those interested, to visit. http://www.michelegianetti.com
I also tell out story, to offer hope in my book “I Believe In You: A Mother and Daughter’s Special Journey”