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100+ fun activities for kids that will keep them entertained for hours! Target speech development through play and games. They won’t even know they are learning!

Learn about your baby and toddler developmental milestones! Check if you are on track, when to worry, and how to work on skills like language, potty training, and feeding!

Every child is different! Here are speech and language tips and tools for kids with learning differences, alongside information for parents provided by speech therapists.

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From your first worry to your first appointment, and your last speech therapy session – find the information you need to help your child thrive and gain necessary speech skills.

Parent's Academy › Activities for Kids › Language Activities › 4 Kids’ Oral Motor Exercises for Muscle Weakness

4 Kids’ Oral Motor Exercises for Muscle Weakness

Stacie bennett.

Speech-Language Pathologist , Trenton , New Jersey

May 8, 2024 Parents asked: "My son started to babble like he wants to have a conversation with me. I noticed he doesn't use his tongue. What kind of kids' oral motor exercises should I do?"

Are you starting to think that your child has trouble speaking? Ok, stay calm. If you see your child not using a part of their mouth that they need to use, especially at around 2–3 years old, you need to get them evaluated by a speech pathologist to rule out any type of oral-motor disorder. Articulation issues are just one sign that help may be necessary.

The good news here is that a child who is babbling is attempting to communicate. Babbling is a precursor for language, so if your child is doing that, they are on the track to communicating more through words.

What is an Oral-Motor Disorder? 

Oral motor disorders can fall into three main categories:

• Oral or verbal apraxia : the inability for the mouth to do what the brain tells it to do due to motor planning difficulties;
• Dysarthria: the inability to eat safely or speak clearly due to muscle weakness or sluggishness;
• Delay in the development of musculature for eating .

Causes of Oral-Motor Disorders

Oral motor disorders can be caused by incorrect motor programming of the muscles of the mouth – the brain sends a message to the mouth muscles, but the muscles either don’t receive or misinterpret the message.

Then the muscles don’t move or move in the wrong way, making it difficult to manage food in the mouth and to produce intelligible speech.

Some children may have difficulty remembering the movements, which then makes it difficult to make the sounds automatic.

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Low muscle tone of the lips, tongue, or jaw can be another cause. I don’t know the details about the child in question, but if your child is showing issues with movement of certain parts of their mouth, watch them eating, as well.

If it’s a true issue, they will have difficulty moving food around in their mouths. They may also have issues drinking from straws if they have lip or tongue weaknesses. 

Get Evaluated for Speech Therapy 

If you suspect an oral motor disorder, your pediatrician can refer you to a speech-language pathologist (SLP) who can properly diagnose your child.

The therapist will interview you to see what you are noticing at home, but will also perform an assessment on your child.

This assessment may include the following: 

• Checking for signs of weakness or low muscle tone in the lips, jaw, and tongue.
• Seeing how well the child can coordinate mouth movements by having her imitate non-speech actions such as moving the tongue from side to side, smiling, frowning, and puckering the lips.
• Evaluating the coordination and sequencing of muscle movements for speech while the child performs tasks such as the diadochokinetic rate, in which the child repeats strings of sounds such as puh-tuh-kuh as fast as possible.
• Testing the child’s skills in “real-life” situations , such as licking a lollipop, and comparing this to skills in “pretend” situations, such as pretending to lick a lollipop.

If therapy is recommended, the therapist will instruct you on what movements and exercises you can do based on your child’s weakness.

4 oral-motor exercises for speech clarity to try at home

Here are four toddler activities that include articulation and other speech exercises:

• Blowing bubbles . This is for lip and cheek weakness, but it’s fun and kids will play with bubbles without even knowing it’s therapy.
• Using straws to drink. This works on every aspect of a child’s mouth. Children should be using straw cups by 1 year of age.
• Making funny faces. Have your child look in a mirror and imitate funny faces. Again, these faces will depend on what weakness your child is displaying. Also practicing chewing exercises for toddlers will help!
• Lollipops. Yes, they can be used in therapy. Your therapist will have your child lick the lollipop or different candies using their tongues in different positions so that the tongue gains strength. Doing tongue exercises for speech therapy is very important.

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The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not necessarily reflect the views of Blub Blub Inc. All content provided on this website is for informational purposes only and is not intended to be a substitute for independent professional medical judgement, advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website.

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Speech Therapy Exercises For Children

Fun, At-Home Speech Therapy Exercises for Children

This week, in the spirit of the Olympics, we thought we’d offer some of our favorite speech therapy exercises and activities to do at home. That’s right, exercises! While there will not be a half-pipe, blob-sledding track or a gold medal at the end of your session, the reward will be an opportunity to spend quality time with your child and help him or her with increasing speech and language skills.

There are a wide variety of reasons to work on speech therapy exercises at home. Sometimes, a parent is not sure if her child needs to see a speech therapist and would like to do some speech therapy exercises at home first. Perhaps your child’s teacher has expressed concern that he has some stuttering, or needs help in speech skills. Or, your child is already seeing an SLP and you would like to supplement what he is learning with at-home activities.

We have put together a list of exercises, tools and activities worthy of the Sochi games. Each exercise is designed to engage your child and stimulate language and speech production. Remember, therapy sessions, especially for children under the age of three should be FUN! Your child may not cooperate if he feels like he is in a formal learning environment. Children need to enjoy their activities in order to learn. While a little structure is okay, let your child walk around the room, wiggle and giggle to get the most out of your time together.

Exercises for Speech Therapy:

Flash cards.

Flash cards can help kids in speech therapy to focus on the sounds that they have difficulty with. You can help make it more entertaining by providing an activity for kids to do along with them or a reward when done correctly. For example, a small piece of candy (chewable is good for strengthening jaw muscles) after saying a certain number of sounds on the language cards correctly.

Mirror Exercises

Many kids with articulation problems don’t understand how to move their mouths to make sounds correctly. Speaking in front of a mirror can help a child to see how her mouth moves when she makes particular sounds. You can articulate each sound slowly and correctly to model proper positioning for your child and demonstrate the differences in the mirror.

This is a simple game to help get your child to repeat the same word six times. Choose six words that you want to practice. Slide each word into a clear plastic paper protector, aka “lily pads”. Spread the plastic lily pads all over the room.  Have your child hop to each lily pad, each time saying the word. After he hops to all six of the lily pads and says the word correctly, your little frog may want a tasty fly as a reward!

This is a fun board game by Hasbro that helps children identify everyday items such as cars, animals, foods and sea creatures.  Not only does this game teach problem-solving, it encourages proper character identification and socialization skills. Beware, you may find yourself playing it over and over!

These are four of our favorites – what are yours?

Check out these websites for additional speech therapy exercises and activities:

Speech Therapy Games to Use At Home

Speech Buddies: Activities and Exercises for Home

10 Awesome Speech Therapy Exercises To Help Your Clients with Speech Disorders

The practice of speech-language therapy is a challenging, often demanding profession that requires professionals with a master’s level education, a post-graduate fellowship, state licensure, and, more often than not, national certification. Their advanced level of education and training qualifies them to assess, diagnose, and treat a wide array of speech, language, swallowing, and communication disorders.

It’s important work, for sure, but ask any speech-language pathologist (SLP) and they’ll likely tell you it’s also pretty darn fun. After all, it’s one of just a few professions that allow you to get on the floor and play with kids.

What are speech therapy exercises?

Informal, personal interactions marked by focused speech language exercises are at the heart of speech-language therapy. Structured speech therapy exercises are techniques and tools that encourage a child’s speech and language development. They’re a necessary part of improving a child’s speech, language, and communication skills and, when delivered as part of an engaging activity, are fun for young patients while still being a very effective part of therapy.

In fact, if you really want to connect with your pediatric clients, fun activities should be an essential part of every speech therapy session. Creativity should play a big role in your SLP practice. That means always having a new exercise or game in your SLP toolbox. Switching it up keeps your kids – and you, too, quite frankly – interested and engaged. It’s a win-win. A positive speech therapy session means working toward clearly defined SLP goals and having a good time, too. What could be better than that?

Keep things fresh in your practice by implementing new pediatric speech therapy exercises and you’ll soon find you’re having as much fun as they are.

We’ve curated a list of our favorite games aimed at language, voice exercises, speech therapy and more that are sure to get your preschool and school-aged clients engaged, excited, and looking forward to their next SLP session!

Speech and Language Exercises to Keep Your Clients Fully Engaged

You already have the skills necessary to deliver effective speech therapy exercises to your pediatric clients; now it’s time to kick your creativity and resourcefulness up a notch and turn them into games to keep those kids interested. Whether you’re looking for exercises that focus on sensory feedback, articulation, oral motor, or language acquisition, you’ll want to make sure you’re pulling out all the stops and providing them with exercises that are as entertaining as they are effective.

Get Hoppin’

Toss It Around

Bean bags are always a fun addition to speech and language exercises. Get yourself a number of small, lightweight bean bags and keep them handy when you want to practice articulation drills with your kids. Allow your littlest clients to toss a bean bag to you, to each other, or into a basket other container each time they successfully practice their target sound or word. Challenge your older kids by placing baskets at varying distances and encouraging them to hit each basket.

You can also set up a tic-tac-toe board using just a simple piece of construction paper and mark each section with a target sound or word. As you land the bean bags on the squares, you’ll each call out the proper target sound or word associated with that square.

Treasure Hunting Fun

Blow It Away

For many pediatric clients, dysarthria and other speech disorders require SLP exercises designed to strengthen the muscles of the mouth. Blowing through a straw to push a balloon or ping pong ball across the room is a great way to help them work on building these muscles. Create a finishing line and encourage your kids to see how fast they can get the ball across the room. Better still, challenge them to a race to see who can get their ball or balloon across the room first!

Hide-n-Speak

Tell Me a Story

Whether you’re looking to improve a child’s articulation, disfluency, or expressive language, you’ll find that storytelling is a great way to get them talking. Encourage your kids to make silly stories with you by taking turns telling parts of the story. For example, you can start the story by saying, “Once upon a time, there was a big dinosaur who had a cavity but was afraid to go to the dentist.” Your student can then take over the story by telling a few lines and then passing it back to you, and so on until you have created a silly story that’ll leave you both laughing.

I Went to the Store and Bought…

Here’s a great way to get your pediatric clients talking and expanding upon their descriptive word vocabulary. It also requires them to pay attention, which is always a plus! Start the game by saying, “I went to the store and bought milk.” The child then continues the grocery list by adding the item you said, along with a new item. For example, they may then say, “I went to the store and bought milk and fruit snacks.” See how many items you and the child can remember on the list! This is also a great game to play when working with multiple children in a school-based setting. Have them sit in a circle and play the game by moving around the circle and asking each child to add to the list.

Hopping Fun

Hopscotch is another great way to encourage your kids to practice their target sounds or words while getting up and moving! Create a hopscotch board using inexpensive, interlocking puzzle floor mats and then encourage the child to say the target sound or word each time they hop on the hopscotch board. Or, you can also attach target words or sounds to each hopscotch number and ask the child to sound out each word when they hop on it.

Moving Right Along

Toy cars are a fun way to get your younger kids talking. Create a roadway throughout the room using tape or yarn, and make several “stops” that include the target word, sound, or sentence. As the child reaches each stop, encourage them to sound out the target word or sentence before moving on toward the finish line.

There are complementary techniques to support speech therapy. Here’s the Top 5 Alternative and Complementary Modalities to Pair with Speech Therapy.

• Emerson College - Master's in Speech-Language Pathology online - Prepare to become an SLP in as few as 20 months. No GRE required. Scholarships available.
• Arizona State University - Online - Online Bachelor of Science in Speech and Hearing Science - Designed to prepare graduates to work in behavioral health settings or transition to graduate programs in speech-language pathology and audiology.
• NYU Steinhardt - NYU Steinhardt's Master of Science in Communicative Sciences and Disorders online - ASHA-accredited. Bachelor's degree required. Graduate prepared to pursue licensure.
• Calvin University - Calvin University's Online Speech and Hearing Foundations Certificate - Helps You Gain a Strong Foundation for Your Speech-Language Pathology Career.
• George Mason University - George Mason University's Graduate Programs in Special Education, Autism Spectrum Disorders, and Applied Behavior Analysis. - Prepares you for a rewarding career as a Speech and Language Pathologist.