The Magic of Bubbles… from a Speech Therapist!

Here are some ways you can use bubbles to help your child’s language development.

Blow bubbles for your child – watch for their anticipation of more bubbles. Wait for eye contact before you blow more.

Use bubbles to get your child to make a request – blow them, put the lid back on tightly and hand the bottle to your child…now wait to see what they do. As they can’t open the bottle, if they hand them back to you for help, they are making a request!

Teach a sign – when they hand back the bottle you can make the sign for “open”, or pause the bubble-blowing to see if they can ask for “more”. Other signs you could teach are: “want” and “finished”

Teach sounds – model /m/ for “more”, /b/ for “bubbles” and /p/ for pop”. All of these sounds are great first sounds to practice as they are made with both lips together and so can be easily seen, unlike the sounds like /k/ and /g/ which are made at the back of the mouth.

Teach turn-taking – “my turn”, “your turn”. This is crucial practice for conversational turn-taking.

Use bubbles for teaching lip-rounding for speech sounds such as /w/, /oo/ and /o/. Your lips should be rounded when you blow bubbles. If your child’s lips are not in the right position use a wide straw for them to blow through into the wand. This helps get their lips into the right shape!

Blowing longer streams of bubbles is good for the abdominal muscles and helps breath control for speech!

So, go ahead and have fun!