Fun Tricks to Practice the 'S' Sound

Does your child have a lisp?  Here are some fun exercises that will help your child learn to produce 'S' correctly.

First of all there’s the Smiling Librarian trick.  First you pucker your mouth as you say ‘SHHHHH!’ and after a couple of seconds, you switch your mouth shape to a smile as you continue to do it.  Smiling should change it to an ‘S’ sound.  Then switch back to a pucker shape and the ‘SH’ sound should return.  Keep trying that to see what happens to your tongue as you do this.  Your tongue should move forward a bit for ‘S’ and back a bit for ‘SH’.

Another fun exercise is the rainbird sprinkler -- hold your arms out in front of you, hands together, and imitate a rainbird sprinkler.

First you make the ‘T’ sound, one per second, as you slowly move your arms to the right 90 degrees. Then, quickly return back to your original position, making the 'T' sound increasingly rapidly until it is continuous and turns into an 'S' sound. 

Basically, the 'S' sound is a 'T' where the airstream is no longer stopped by the tongue but allowed to escape through a narrow gap.  Have your child do the rainbird exercise with you to see if it turns into an ‘S’ sound.

Have fun!