Wow! Part 6 and we still have so much to cover! Didn’t I warn you this series could go on for awhile? The good news is, articulation and speech sound instruction have become a LOVE of mine in the last year, and I am so excited to continue to tell you more and more about it. Today we are going to be discussing the general development of specific sounds.
If you Google search “Speech Sound Development Chart” you will find a few dozen different charts, all with different “developmental norms” that children should be able to produce by a certain age. The point? That it is relative and every child develops differently, but we need to know general “rule of thumb” or an overview of which sounds are harder and which sounds are easier. I’ve taken most of this data from the ASHA website, but I like to tell people to think of it in terms of “easiest to more challenging sounds” instead of a straight correlation between age and speech sound. So with that, onto the ages!
| Age | Sounds |
| By 3 years…. | P – as in “pea”
M – as in “mom” H – as in “home” W – as in “wagon” B – as in “baby” |
| By 4 years… | K – as in “kite”
G – as in “go” T – as in “tea” D – as in “dog” NG – as in “swing” F – as in “food” Y – as in “yes” |
| By 5 years…. | S – as in “sand”
Z – as in “zebra” L – as in “lion” SH – as in “sheep” CH – as in “cheetah” R – as in “red” |
| By 6 years… | TH – as in “thing”
J – as in “jump” V – as in “violin” |
Check back later this week to hear about things that therapists have to consider when they are picking sounds for children to work on in therapy! Check out this link to ASHA’s speech sound development chart (https://www.asha.org/uploadedFiles/ASHA/Practice_Portal/Clinical_Topics/Late_Language_Emergence/Consonant-Acquisition-Chart.pdf)
-Kasey-