The benefits of tongue twisters for kids
With school starting, parents are focused on preparing their children for the big event. Every parent wants their child to make a good impression on their first day of school. One area many parents are concerned about is their child’s speech. Tongue twisters are a fun way to help all children improve their articulation and pronunciation.
It is all about the brain
Similar to the way Easy Tie shoelaces teach the brain how to tie, tongue twisters teach the brain to connect tongue movements to sounds. It is a motor skill just as important as learning to ride a bike or learning to tie your shoes.
Actors, politicians, and motivational speakers all know this, that’s why they use tongue twisters to warm up by exercising the muscles in their mouth, enabling clearer pronunciation, overall clearer speech patterns, and an easier time pronouncing previously difficult syllables.
Children can use tongue twisters as a learning exercise too. The tongue twister should be spoken slowly, in order to give the child time to speak it correctly with proper pronunciation and articulation. After that, the speed can be increased until the child is able to say the tongue twister at various speeds without tripping up their tongue.
A 2012 study from China found that just one week of speech therapy can help reorganize brain connectivity and reduce stuttering and other speech related issues. Try some of these fun tongue twisters and have fun while teaching your child to speak clearer.
Examples from Tongue Twisters for Kids by Riley Weber, free on google play
1. Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
2. Loopy lizards lying lazily aloft a little lane of logs.
3. Hiccup teacup!
4. Tommy Tucker tried to tie Tammy’s Turtles tie.
5. Double bubble gum, bubbles double.
6. Cheap sheep soup.
7. The sun shines on the shop signs.
8. Fresh, fried fish, fish fresh fried, fried fish fresh.
9. He threw three balls.
10. Does this shop sport short socks with spots?
11. Clean clams crammed in clean cans.
12. I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream!
13. Jolly juggling jesters jauntily juggled jingling jacks.
14. Lowly lowland llamas are ladylike.
15. A tidy tiger tied a tie tighter to tidy her tiny tail.
16. A slimy snake slithered down the sandy Sahara.
17. How many cans can a canner can, if a canner can can cans? A canner can can as many cans as a canner can, if a canner can can cans.
18. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Did Peter Piper pick a peck of pickled peppers? If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper pickled?
19. She sells seashells by the seashore. The shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells shells on the seashore, I’m sure she sells seashore shells.
20. Freshly- fired flying fish.
21. Cheap ship trip.
22. Strange strategic statistics.
23. Shark kite, shark kite, shark kite.
24. Bad black bran bread.
25. A loyal warrior will rarely worry why we rule.
26. Cinnamon aluminum linoleum.
27. A skunk sat on a stump and thunk the stump stunk, but the stump thunk the skunk stunk.
28. Toy boat, toy boat, toy boat.
Sometimes your brain has a tongue hiccup known as a spoonerisms. Here is an example
As the Crow Flies
As the Flow Cries
Do you have certain word combinations or phrases that regularly trip you up or consistently become spoonerisms?
