How Bubbles Can Improve Speech Skills in Children
Bubbles may seem like a simple play activity, but they offer big opportunities for early communication development. They’re motivating, fun, easy to use, and naturally create chances for repetition, turn-taking, and predictable routines — all of which are building blocks for speech and language growth.
I'm Sarah, a speech-language pathologist at Metro Therapy. This is a series about using bubbles to build speech and language skills with your young children. In the last post, we focused on pre-linguistic skills. So, if you missed that and you want to check it out, it’s on our blog.
In this post, we'll be talking about building language with early language building strategies. The great thing about these strategies is they can be used in any language. So if English is not your first language, they will work just as well. They can also be used with children that are using AAC devices.
Strategy 1: High-Frequency Modeling
The first strategy we're going to talk about is high frequency modeling. This is just a fancy way of saying you're going to say the same word lots and lots of times during your activity.
Here’s an example with just using the word bubbles. I might say something like this:
Want to play bubbles?
Look, bubbles.
Here come the bubbles.
Bubble, bubble, bubble.
If you want to use more than one target word, that's fine. You can focus on a couple at a time, maybe blow, bubble and pop, and keep using those repetitively. It might feel like overkill at first, saying the same word so many times. But that repetition is so beneficial for our young children who are at risk for (or diagnosed with) communication disorders or delays.
Strategy 2: Using Verbal Routines
A verbal routine is kind of a predictable set of words or phrases that go along with a repeated activity. These occur naturally in daily life. For example, ready, set, go is used a lot in a lot of different situations.
You might have a little rhyme or phrase that you use when your child wakes up in the morning or before they go to bed. All of these are verbal routines. An example of a verbal routine I might use while playing with bubbles would be something like this:
Say, “dip, dip, dip” when they’re dunking the wand into the bubble mixture.
Say, “Ready, set, blow!” when they’re ready to start blowing the bubbles.
Say, “Pop, pop, pop” to encourage them to pop the bubbles in the air.
If we do that routine over and over again, using that same set of words and phrases, it becomes a verbal routine. That makes it very predictable, and it helps children learn the language to go with that activity.
Strategy 3: Expectant Waiting
Once you've got a verbal routine established, then you can use our third strategy, which is expectant waiting. This is where you're going to use your verbal routine and give a little bit of extra wait time. You should really use your body and facial expressions to show that you're expecting the child to fill in the next part of the routine.
With our example before, it might look like this: I might say, “ready, set, blow.” And you're going to wait a few seconds to see if your child will fill in the next part of the routine (“pop, pop, pop”) after it's been established.
If they don't do it right away, you can continue modeling and just keep using that expectant waiting until they do.
Want Personalized Support for Your Child’s Communication?
If you’d like guidance using these strategies at home or want help supporting your child’s speech and language development, our team would love to work with you. Call Metro Therapy at (763) 450-9400 to speak with an SLP or schedule an appointment.
