Speech development tools for preschool children

At a certain period of his life, namely in early preschool age, the child begins to strive to discuss with the people around him various objects and phenomena that interest him. The ability to talk and express his thoughts allows the baby to go beyond the limits of a specific situation and his own experiences associated with it. In this article we will talk in some detail about the means of developing the speech of preschoolers from different aspects. If you take some time to read our material, you may learn a lot of useful information on this issue.

Speech development in children

As a rule, until the age of 2, a child actively communicates only with adults. It’s good if there are older brothers/sisters in the family, then the baby will definitely copy the speech, looking at them, and perhaps speak before his peers. But if the child is the first-born in the house, then most likely he communicates only with people “incomprehensible” to him. It may seem to you that at the age of two your child communicates only with gestures, facial expressions or with the help of emotional expression of sounds, but everything is much more “serious”. At this age, the baby is already actively accumulating vocabulary in his head and subconsciously remembers a huge number of different words, including information about objects that represent certain words. A child’s understanding of the meaning of what someone says goes through several stages. So, he can associate an object with his own experience, with a certain place, perhaps with a visual picture of it. He cannot yet imagine sizes and materials and does not pay attention to them, so the sensual side at this age is the main guide.

It is believed that at two years old a child can already form a certain vocabulary consisting of 200 or more words. Although most of them are distorted, pronounced incorrectly and may be completely incomprehensible to an adult, the baby knows them, remembers them and applies them in relation to specific objects and phenomena. For example, “yat” can mean the word “ball”, “abuska” - “grandmother”, etc. If you have ever seen how children of the same age communicate, then you may have probably noticed that they speak a language that is incoherent for an adult, communicate in separate sounds, but at the same time understand each other perfectly.

In order to quickly develop a child’s speech, it is necessary to regularly organize special classes, engage in playful and mobile activities, communicate with him “as equals” and, of course, pay great attention to the development of the baby’s fine motor skills.

Advice: never communicate with children in words that you deliberately pronounce distortedly, as if in a childish way. Don’t babysit with your child, but speak to him clearly and distinctly, pronouncing every letter of the word. Instead of “artosque,” say “It’s a potato!” It’s tasty and healthy!” Teaching the incorrect pronunciation of words from a very early age in the future will require you to have individual lessons with a speech therapist and learn to “re-pronounce” the same words, only now in the correct form.

Basic means of speech development

The importance of speech

Agree, until the first conscious words and statements it is difficult to perceive a screaming lump as a person with his own thoughts and desires, but a talking child is already a worthy interlocutor with whom you can and should talk about literally everything.

The child himself also needs the ability to speak. It helps him communicate with family, friends, and peers in the garden.

Methodological tools

conversation with adults;
speech of a kindergarten teacher;
special classes, for example, with a speech therapist or lessons on early development methods;
reading fiction;
art classes.

Communication with family

When the child begins to speak his first words, there is no need to relax, there is still a lot of, but interesting work ahead. We talk to him as often as possible, talking about surrounding objects and actions, calling names, colors, characteristics of things, asking leading questions, playing with him.

Recommendations for home:

reading poetry, nursery rhymes, tongue twisters, fairy tales;
sing simple and catchy songs with him, as musical works train breathing, help cope with stuttering, form correct phonemic hearing, and develop a speech rate;
recite simple poems or riddles with him that involve pronouncing the right word, read the first part to the baby, and let him say the last word, remember, and choose. If the child finds it difficult, you can suggest the first part of the required word;
watch and read colorful fairy tales with your child, pointing your finger at the mentioned characters and objects as the story progresses; dialogues need to be read in different intonations, you can even copy the voices of animals and people;
use finger games, it has been proven that these interesting, memorable poems and songs, when combined with certain gestures, not only help develop memory, but also accelerate the development of speech, and playing them is very interesting even for adults, you know, it’s addictive!

Be sure to read about the features of using tongue twisters for children.

Kindergarten teacher's speech

A very important part of the development of coherent speech, because the child hears this person almost every day for several hours and remembers the peculiarities of the construction of words and sentences. It has been proven that children, like sponges, absorb new interesting phrases and expressions, so that they can later use them in conversation.

The most favorable environment for children is the calm, friendly tone of the teacher and his meaningful, understandable and vivid speech.

Special classes

In principle, in early childhood development classes, teachers use all the same methods as caring mothers - the same nursery rhymes, rhymes, songs, riddles, finger games.

Reading fiction

The effectiveness of fairy tales and folklore for a child is difficult to overestimate, because you and I grew up and learned from stories about the pockmarked hen, sleeping beauty, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood and many other instructive stories.

The methodology as a science also recognizes the importance of fiction, because through it children first learn to feel the beauty and imagery of their native language, and then they try to recreate individual words and phrases.

In our age of technological progress, modern gadgets with interesting games for kids and exciting cartoons are increasingly coming to the fore, to watch which you do not need to use your imagination and imagine the events described in history. But if possible, we still teach our children to the printed word; even the most fashionable TV cannot replace it.

Art classes

Painting, music, theater are also helpers for the development of a child’s speech; they evoke a strong emotional response, which requires dedication from the child and provokes a desire to share impressions.

Take your little one to a puppet theater or a special children's show, try to become actors yourself by playing with your favorite toys or purchasing a finger theater made from soft toys or paper figurines. Let the child express himself as a creative person, try out different roles, intonations and voices.

The means to quickly develop a child’s speech are multifaceted and varied. Sometimes it’s enough just to pay attention to the baby and have fun playing useful games to notice tangible results. Choose the most suitable game and help your baby quickly master communication skills.

Speech of a 3-year-old child and delay in the development of the speech apparatus

At the age of 3 years, a child’s vocabulary ranges from 1000 words or more. The baby no longer just pronounces words, but can also do it correctly from a phonetic point of view and even form them into sentences. According to statistics, girls begin to speak earlier than boys, but all children are individual and there are no specific standards in this area.

If a child does not know or pronounce any words until the age of 3, or his vocabulary is too small, then a neurologist may diagnose a “lag in the development of the speech apparatus.” At this age of a child, this diagnosis should not frighten his parents, since with the right approach, speech can improve in just a few months. If there are no reasons for such a diagnosis from a health point of view, that is, the baby does not suffer from a disorder of the central nervous system, does not have developmental disabilities or other serious diseases, then you will be shown exercises to strengthen the muscles of the mouth.

To strengthen your mouth muscles, you must do the following:

Eat solid foods more often, which must be chewed thoroughly.
Invite the baby to blow and whistle. Buy him soap bubbles, a pipe, a whistle, or make a raft out of a cork or piece of foam plastic, which you need to blow on, lowering it into the water (playing a boat).
Let your baby drink juice through a straw, asking him to suck in his cheeks as much as possible.
Imitate the sounds of animals and objects around you. For example, you can “start the engine” by saying “trrrrrrrrr” or play “train” with the sound “chukhchukhchukh”.
Regularly practice fine motor skills. Remember that the quality of your baby's speech is at the tip of his fingers. Therefore, there is never too much modeling from plasticine, playing with kinetic or regular sand, and painting with finger paints!
Perform simple articulation gymnastics with your baby. A speech therapist or the Internet can tell you exercises for gymnastics. You can find, for example, a video on this topic and watch it with your baby. And then repeat the exercises you watched in front of the mirror.

If your baby has certain diseases or disorders of the central nervous system, then you will have to develop the speech apparatus together with your doctor. You may need to take certain medications, as well as use methods to stimulate the cerebral cortex.

What will help speed up speech development?

Fine motor stimulation

It has been proven that in a child’s brain the centers responsible for clear motor skills and speech are located nearby, and stimulation of the first provokes the development of the second. Here, experts recommend using small objects that the baby can sort through; puzzles are an excellent example.

Buy simple cute pictures and collect them together with your child, captivating him with the story that in the end you can get a beautiful picture.

You can also draw with finger paints, felt-tip pens, and pencils, trying not only to train your little one’s hand, but also, during creativity, to call colors, shapes and designs by their proper names in order to increase the baby’s vocabulary.

Breathing exercises

For correct articulation, the child needs to learn to pronounce words as he exhales, which means he needs to control his speech breathing, the strength of his voice and the muscles of his lips.

Various games are used for these purposes:

“snowflake” - cut out a snowflake from thin paper and invite the child to blow it from the palm of his hand;

“boat” - make a boat out of paper, lower it into a basin of water and invite the child to set the direction of the ship by blowing it off;

“butterfly” cut out a butterfly, and after threading a thread through it, invite the baby to make it fly - to do this, blow on it.

Articulation gymnastics

It helps improve control of the lip and tongue muscles needed to accurately produce sounds.

The simplest exercises can be a child making antics in front of a mirror while washing his face, ask him to stretch his lips into a tube and pronounce the letter “o” and syllables with it. You can train your baby's tongue by simply smearing your lips with honey, jam or other sweets.

Later you can move on to more complex speech therapy sessions. For example, invite the child to reach his cheeks, nose, chin with his tongue, click it like a horse, and “put it to sleep” on his teeth.

An ordinary smile can be an equally useful game - it helps children master the difficult sound “Y” to pronounce.

Outdoor games with sound

Little children love noisy, fun games, during which you need to follow the clues contained in the poems; an excellent example of such fun would be “The Sea Is Worried Once”, “Geese-Geese”.

You can learn such rhymes on your own, and then play with your baby, encouraging him to repeat at least the simplest words.

Conversations with adults

Children cannot learn to talk, always being in splendid isolation; development is only possible with close and interesting communication. You've probably heard that you need to talk to babies literally from birth.

It is especially important to talk with children after two years. And not just limit yourself to monosyllabic answers, but explain in detail, albeit in simple words, everything that interests the baby.

In turn, you need to ask the child his opinion and decisions, stimulating not ordinary answers in the “yes” or “no” format, but real sentences - this is the only way children develop coherent speech.

To do this, you need to learn how to correctly formulate questions, abandoning the usual “do you want to eat?” in favor of “what will you eat?” or say instead of “what is the bear doing?” - “why is he crying, laughing, what is he doing?”

Methods of speech development for preschool children

Five-year-old preschool children can already express their own thoughts quite well, formulate complex phrases, and communicate in sentences. The child freely shares his impressions using speech, classifies information, can remember and transmit it. Interestingly, the brain of a preschooler can absorb an amazing amount of different information. Kids “greedily” absorb what is new to them and especially interesting. By the way, most of all they like stories and fairy tales in which the characters are very similar to them, have the same age and even similar names. Children love such stories and are ready to listen to them several times in a row every day. And as soon as the storyteller makes a mistake and makes a mistake in the next narration, the child will immediately draw the adult’s attention to this and indicate “how to tell it correctly.”

But it’s not just the narrative that makes up the methodology for developing speech in preschoolers. This includes several important aspects:

Education of sound speech culture. What does it mean? Many linguists, psychologists and teachers involved in research in this area are convinced that it is the sound side of the language that becomes the subject of special attention of the child quite early. We have already mentioned this above, saying that the baby is initially attracted by the external structure of speech, i.e. sound, and only then by everything else. That is why in preschool institutions they always read a lot of fairy tales to children, and put on puppet shows for them with characters performing in different voices. In this case, the intonational coloring of the story plays an important role, namely exclamation, question, puzzlement, etc. In addition to fairy tales, games and exercises for linear speech are practiced. This helps the baby understand the sound coloring of a word and begin to move from naming an object or phenomenon to a figurative description of it. It is necessary to teach the child to correctly use intonation and pacing of the story to convey to them the emotional component of the story.
Education of correct sound pronunciation. Teachers in preschool educational institutions pay great attention to the issues of correct sound pronunciation of children. Painstaking work is carried out to form clear articulation and prepare the organs of the articulatory apparatus for the pronunciation of certain sounds. At the same time, according to statistics, most often preschool children have a problem with the pronunciation of hissing sounds. By the way, if children attend a specialized speech therapy group in a kindergarten, then the speech therapist will select for each of them a set of individual articulation exercises for those sounds that he sees problems with the pronunciation of for each specific child.
The approach to children in the middle group of kindergarten is approximately the same as to toddlers. That is, the teacher actively develops articulatory organs together with the child, performing a series of exercises to strengthen and develop the muscles of the face, tongue, and lips. However, by the age of 5 years, speech itself already takes on a new coloring. Here, demonstrative pronouns and new definitions are more common, and the child begins to speak in monologues.
Mastering the concept of the “sound line” of speech by demonstrating the sequence of pronunciation of sounds.
Development of awareness of the pronunciation side of speech. Ideally, a child of senior preschool age, when asked: “Are you speaking correctly, are you pronouncing all the sounds?” must answer specifically mentioning his speech problems. Explain to your child that there is nothing wrong with him not pronouncing a certain sound. Explain that he should strive for correct pronunciation and such and such exercises and activities will help with this. Do not encourage your child when he speaks correctly, otherwise he may feel “not like everyone else”, and the norm of pronunciation is something special. But be sure to pay his attention if the sound was pronounced incorrectly.

Conditions for successful speech development of a preschooler

Not all parents understand what features should be paid attention to and what means to use in order to favorably influence the speech development of their child. However, everyone knows what result they expect: every year the baby should speak better and better, should know and use more and more words in speech, pronounce sounds more clearly, and construct sentences correctly.

Taking into account this natural request of parents, let's try to determine the conditions that create suitable soil for the development of speaking skills in children.

The formation of any skills and abilities requires training. Accordingly, in order for a preschooler’s speech skills to improve every month in terms of pronunciation, enrichment of vocabulary and coherence of statements, he needs to:

Constantly hear and listen to the speech of other people, preferably literate and expressive.
Talk a lot yourself.
Get acquainted with new words, their concept and meaning.

The child’s closest people are fully responsible for creating such conditions: mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, nanny...

What is surprising is that despite the simplicity of the conditions listed, adults often use them so little that children do not receive nourishment, and their speech development is delayed.

Here it should be noted that usually the speech of a 4-5 year old child does not yet sufficiently correspond to the norms of literate adult speech. However, already at this age, from the preschooler’s active vocabulary and his manner of speaking, it is easy to determine whether the formation of his speech skills is proceeding properly or whether this process leaves much to be desired.

Development of coherent speech in preschool children

We have already partially mentioned methods for developing coherent speech in preschoolers. This is communication in whole sentences and logically constructed phrases. When you walk with your child, pay attention to the phenomena of the surrounding world. If the baby is still very small, then tell us yourself. For example, “What a big house is ahead!”, “Look what a bright flower! It smells nice!”, “This is a road, cars and buses drive along it,” etc. You can ask an older child to compose such small stories himself. If he is lost, then help him by directing his thoughts with a question. For example, “What color is this flower? You like him?". Don’t let your child answer in monosyllables; ask them to give detailed answers: “This flower is yellow! It’s bright and that’s why I really like it.”

Games on the ability to use speech help this development:

"Dialogue". Have some small talk over a cup of tea.
"Interview". Let your child be the journalist who asks you questions, then switch roles.
"Professions". Ask your child to talk about a profession.
“Name the action.” Ask a question such as “what does snow do?” and ask the baby to answer with verbs: “falls, spins, melts.”
“What happened next?” The adult begins the narration of the story, and the child will need to listen carefully and come up with a continuation.

Speech development in preschoolers

If your child has problems pronouncing words or individual sounds, then do not be lazy to work with him. Remember that the role of parents in this matter is great and no less significant than the role of a professional speech therapist. Imagine that the speech therapist and you are two separate palms that can only clap together together.

What is required from parents:

Correctly and clearly pronounce words not only addressed to the child, but also spoken in his presence.
As early as possible, start talking to him in separate, logically connected sentences.
Follow all the speech therapist’s recommendations that he may give you to do outside of class.
Don’t be lazy and do at least some gentle articulation gymnastics with your child several times a week.
Correct your child when he pronounces a word incorrectly.
Motivate the child to pronounce words. For example, pretending that you do not understand what his request is, when he is too lazy to say in words, but demands something from you with gestures.
Regularly memorize simple rhymes, as well as tongue twisters and sayings with your children.
Sing songs with your child.
Try with all your might to teach your child the correct pronunciation of words and the correct construction of sentences during preschool age.

The last point, namely the grammar of speech of preschoolers, needs to be given great attention, otherwise the child will subsequently have certain difficulties at school.

Delayed speech development

The main reason for delayed speech development (SDD) in children is its lack of demand. This is revealed in the lack of communication with peers, lack of communication with parents and others. Typically, RRD is observed in those children who are deprived of children's company and have parents who are constantly busy with themselves.

Another reason for this deviation may be genetics or diseases of the nervous system and brain associated with mental retardation.

The next reason for the appearance of RRD is lack of hearing, complete or partial deafness. A child's speech develops based on the sounds he hears. If these sound streams do not exist, then the child will not speak on his own.

The grammatical structure of speech in preschoolers

The formation of correct grammatical structure as early as possible is a very important aspect in the development of a child’s speech. If a child pronounces words incorrectly and does not know how to choose endings, then at school he will have big problems with grammar. Remember that kids write as they hear and, accordingly, hear as they speak! There are many tasks to develop the ability to coordinate nouns with adjectives and verbs, as well as to combine tenses, numbers and cases. For example, you can ask the child to name the same object in different forms (one apple, two apples, five apples). You can ask them to answer the questions “Which one?” about the subject. Which? Which?" (apple is green, crispy, dense, juicy). At the same time, pay attention to the endings and ask the child to correct himself if he pronounces them incorrectly.

A good exercise to develop the grammatical aspect of speech is “Make a story.” You can show your child a picture and ask him to make up a narrative story based on it, clearly pronouncing the endings. If difficulties arise, you can start with statements. That is, give the child a picture, read him a story based on it, asking him to remember, and only then write down the story in his words. It is considered normal if a child of 6-7 years old can come up with a story based on a picture without disturbing the subsequent presentation of the events in it. The use of additional ways of organizing beginnings, as well as different types of narration, can indicate high rates of development of the grammatical structure and creative thinking of a preschooler.

You can develop knowledge about the word-formation nest in almost any aspect of everyday life. For example, a child decides to look at the snow outside the window, ask him to name the snowflake in the plural and make a sentence with this word. Always remember this and try to talk to your children correctly as much as possible.

Approaches and means to stimulate speech development

The speech development of preschool children at different age stages is more effectively influenced by not the same methods and means. Each age has its own techniques. For example, it would seem that pictures are suitable stimulus material for speech development. However, there is a catch to using them. If you show a plot image to a 3-4 year old preschooler and ask him to tell him what he sees, the child will use more situational speech (“Here is a boy standing”, “The dog ran there”, etc.).

Based on this fact, in no case should pictures be abandoned, but when using them, children of primary preschool age should be encouraged to clarify details and express themselves in detail. Already at the age of 5, preschoolers, using illustrations as a visual support, are able to compose a completely logical and complete story, and the situational nature of their speech is greatly reduced.

Preschoolers aged 6-7 years have a large enough vocabulary to compose a full-fledged story, looking at both a series of pictures and an artistic canvas.

K.D. Ushinsky argued that a painting is a powerful means of “untying” a child’s language: he asks questions about what he sees in the painting, shares his impressions, and describes how the plot of the image seems to him.

Thus, it is important for adults to use approaches and means that are appropriate to the child’s actual development and allow them to take a step forward. Let us present several means and methods that are most suitable for preschool age.

Speech development in the game

The game creates excellent conditions for the development of explanatory speech. Agree on the rules of the game or explain to your partner what his role in the game plot is; to explain the action of a toy or to defend his opinion with reason - in such circumstances, the preschooler will have to go beyond the context, abandon situationally oriented phrases and meaningfully express his thoughts.

We still have to wait until the time when a preschooler will explain himself in a game with his peers. And at 3-4 years old, the role of play partner will have to be played by parents or grandparents.

Many people are familiar with how adults accept an invitation to play and a child’s conditions without specifying anything. Frankly speaking, most often they automatically and formally supposedly participate in the game, while simultaneously going about their business. But even just five minutes of real attention in a game can have an impact on the development of a child’s speech skills. Asking the child what roles should be played, helping him formulate the rules of the game, paying attention to the attributes - all these are ways to get the child talking and, moreover, lay the foundations of communication skills.

Fairy tales and literature as a means of speech development

Fairy tales and children's literary works develop the child's perception and understanding of speech. While listening to a work, a preschooler focuses on a complex plot with several lines, simultaneously keeps in memory and tracks the fate of several characters, immerses himself in the description of events and captures many details. Moreover, the older preschooler independently determines the main idea of the story, the moral of the tale, and evaluates the characters.

Already from the age of three, listening and telling fairy tales, stories, and rhymes perform two important speech functions:

secreting;
synthesizing.

The highlighting function when perceiving literary texts (as well as oral narratives that fill our lives) is responsible for ensuring that the child identifies the main points that make up the content of a work or a lengthy reference to it. In simple words, thanks to the highlighting function, the child understands what is being said.

The task of the synthesizing function is to combine individual elements into a single plot or to apply familiar images and speech patterns in a new context.

We can say that the use of literature in raising children has a global impact on their speech development. The child learns to grasp the main thing, receives an example of expressing thoughts, masters ready-made speech patterns, etc.

Where else, if not in literary works, can a child hear so many artistic techniques of speech. The preschooler first uses epithets, comparisons and other means of expression mechanically, retelling the plot. Over time, the means of linguistic expression become firmly established in the child’s vocabulary and are used arbitrarily.

A more detailed discussion of the formation of speech skills with the help of children's works is presented in the article Fairy Tale in the Development of Preschooler Speech.

Elements of theater to help speech development

Everyone knows how much preschoolers love to try on different images. Either they, in the role of a doctor, sternly ask the “patient” about their well-being, then they act as a sorcerer and pronounce magic spells, then they alternately voice each toy, starting a dialogue between them.

That is, all children, to a certain extent, are born artists who easily take on the role and speak on behalf of the hero. This beneficial potential and theatrical activities should be used as a means of speech development.

In a theatrical game, you can either act out ready-made plots, or you can improvise during the action. If this is a favorite fairy tale, then the child already knows many of the characters’ phrases and monologues and repeats them with pleasure.

An adult’s prompts help not to limit oneself only to those phrases that are already familiar to the child, but encourage him to continue speaking on behalf of the character.

To help, the article Development of children's speech through theatrical activities.

It is very useful to memorize short literary texts and poems that are understandable to a preschooler, and then voice them “like an artist.” Correct literary speech allows a child to feel the beauty of his native language, use words to express his speech and enrich his active vocabulary.

Possibilities of logorhythmics in speech development

Accessible and effective means of speech development also include such a modern approach as logorhythmics. However, the only modern thing here is the name. And many years ago, children used a combination of certain actions and rhythmic recitatives in their games. Now a new term has become widespread

Logorhythmics is a technology aimed at the comprehensive development of a child. By pronouncing words and performing certain movements, the baby trains speech skills, articulation and motor skills.

These exercises are fun for children. They easily remember and willingly perform poetry and recitatives, sing songs with various sounds that imitate animals and natural phenomena (meow-meow, drip-drip-drip, etc.), while incorporating movements. An effective technique for speech development in children 3-4 years old.

Logorhythmics is especially useful at the stage of active pronunciation formation and covers an even wider age range - from 2.5 to 4.5 years. By performing exercises, children learn to combine speech and movements, which has a direct impact on the formation of rhythm, tempo and melody of speech. At the same time, speech breathing is trained.