Some favorite books for practicing the “s” sound in speech therapy and at home
Is your child practicing his or her /s/ sound in speech therapy? If so, read on for a list of my three favorite books for practicing the “s” sound.
If your child is already producing the /s/ sound correctly in words and phrases, retelling stories with the “s” sound can be a great way to practice. Books are my favorite activity to practice speech sounds at this level. Books can be a great way to tell a story, retell a story, and answer questions about a story using your best speech sounds.
This post focuses on some of my favorite books for the /s/ sound, which is a common sound my clients are practicing at my clinic. Feel free to watch You Tube videos of these books, check out the book from your library, borrow from a friend, or buy a book or two that you’d like to have at home to practice these sounds.
This book contains some Amazon affiliate links.
In no particular order, my favorites are:
The Paper Bag Princess, by Robert Munsch
This book is about a prince and a princess (see, we are getting to those /s/ sounds already!). A dragon takes the prince away, and the princess is left with figuring out how to save the prince. The ending is not your typical fairy tale (and perhaps a bit abrupt), but there are so many great /s/ sounds in this book:
Princess
Castle
Prince
Handsome
Fierce
Forest
(and more)
Today I Feel Silly, by Jamie Lee Curtis
This book discusses a range of emotions felt by the main character. It’s a nice book because it not only describes several emotions, but also has quite a few /s/ sounds, such as:
Silly
Cookies
Sell
Small
Discouraged
Straight
Sad
Face
(and more)
“Stand Back,” Said the Elephant, “I’m Going to Sneeze!”, by Patricia Thomas
As the title suggests, this book is about an elephant who is about to sneeze. The last time he sneezed, the animals of the jungle weren’t so pleased. The elephant’s sneeze blew off the stingers and wings of the bees, blew the feathers off the birds, and created many other nuisances. This book has more words than the others, so is better for children who can sit for a book with several sentences on each page. This book also includes a lot of /s/-blends (including /sn, st, sw/), so it’s a great one for children practicing /s/-blends as well as /z/ sounds (lots of those, too!). The /s/ sounds in this book include:
Sneeze
Stand
Friends
Bouncing
Jouncing
Us
Some
(and more)
Considerations
Although it may be tempting to read the book and move on, try to really spend some time with each book. Here are some suggestions (give some of them a try):
1. Before you read the book, look at the cover and some of the pages and make predictions
2. After you read each page, have your child tell you something that happened on that page using his or her “new” /s/ sound
3. Practice retelling the story when it’s all done by using your /s/ sound (use the pictures to help)
4. Find the letter “s” or “c” (which can make the /s/ sound) on a page, read the word and make up a sentence using that word
I hope this post has helped you find a new book to try reading with your child to practice your /s/ sound. Although these books have plenty of /s/ sounds in them, you don’t need these specific books in order to practice your speech sounds – any book will do! For even more book ideas for different sounds, this Speech Sprouts page has some great book ideas.
Best of luck as you practice reading, talking, and saying your best speech sounds. I hope your child has fun, builds confidence in his or her speech abilities, and gets lots of speech practice in with these books and ideas!