If you’re looking for the best books for speech therapy, this post will cover several titles that will help you understand speech therapy with tools to use plus a selection of books to actually read with and engage your child!
Choosing a book with repetition and predictability is one of the finest methods to improve a child’s participation (without relying on his or her ability to display reading fluency and understanding).
For many years, educators, librarians, and literacy coaches have been discussing predictable books, and for good reason. It is worth noting that books designed for younger children are more easily identified as predictable. As stories for older children contain more plot elements, we typically observe more overlap of traits in different types of predictable books.
When picking books for speech therapy, it’s important to understand what speech sounds you are targeting and how to engage the child in developing their language skills. This book list will cover a variety of great books that are interactive books and are a fun way to engage children in reaching their language goals.
This post was written and reviewed by a Speech Language Pathologist.
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20 Best Books For Speech Therapy
These first 6 are for educators, speech therapists, and parents (if needed) to use to learn about speech therapy. If you are in grad school for speech therapy, you’ve likely heard of them.
1. Speech Therapy for Toddlers: Develop Early Communication Skills
This is brimming with useful suggestions and methods for promoting young children’s speech and language development.
It will stimulate thoughtful practice and assist early childhood educators in creating interactions that are linguistically rich to support language development in their day-to-day work.
It’s also a great resource for parents who are concerned about their child’s speech.
2. Helping Children Find Their Voices
It is a manual for parents and professionals who are working with kids who are just starting to learn how to talk, particularly how to comprehend and employ two-word sentences.
It is also available as part of a collection with four vibrant picture books that use a serve and return format and pivot words to promote conversation and interaction.
3. Morph Mastery
It helps students with special learning disabilities (SpLD) who have trouble with vocabulary, spelling, and reading. This helpful overview of morphology has been offered by author Louise Selby.
4. DLD and Me
It is a useful workbook that can be used with young children and adults who have developmental language disorders. Examine the introduction for a description of the 12-step program.
5. The Speech and Language Activity Resource Book
It features a number of exercises and worksheets made to help speech-language pathologists conduct tailored and interesting therapy sessions for children. This book companion can help with lessons plans or can be used as an effective tool in addressing a communication disorder. You’ll find great activities in here!
6. Working with Children’s Language
Assist practitioners working with young children who have delayed language acquisition It includes targeted games and activities for use with children and covers topics such as attention control and listening, the role of play, verbal comprehension, and the acquisition of spoken expressive language.
These books are to be used during speech therapy for targeting sounds and language. These are also some classic books and some of the best children’s books out there. If you have other suggests to add to the list of the best books and speech therapy books, leave them in the comments!
1. School-Start Storybooks
Encourage language development in children in reception and Key Stage 1 both at school and at home. Each book has a captivating story that is colorful and geared toward young readers. The language was chosen with language-needs kids in mind.
2. One Duck Stuck
Targeting the /c/ sound, this book focuses on rhyming and an engaging, entertaining story that little ones will love. This is one of our favorite books.
3. Press Here
Use the actions in this book to engage your little one and get them talking with verbs! It’s a fun way to engage and age group!
4. Brown Bear Brown Bear
This classic book is an excellent addition to speech therapy sessions. The predictable aspect makes it exciting for children and you can target a variety of different sounds with it. There is also a book on polar bears that is worth adding to the list too!
5. Fabian Fish Finger: How To Say The ‘f’ Sound
The third book in a series intended at youngsters with simple speech sound delays is Fabian Fish Finger.
Fabian fish finger is fascinated with fish and longs to be one himself. Join him as he attempts to swim with them and, via a little magic, learns to speak the /f/ sound to make his wish come true.
Additionally, Karma Wilson has written a series called “The Bear Books” which are quite engaging for young children! These are a great read for all ages.
6. Baby Says
This book is well-loved for introducing exclamatory and functional words.
7. Moo, Baa, La-La-La
This book is a great too for encouraging animal sounds as well as targeting yes and no.
8. Peek-a-Who
The flaps in this book are engaging, plus it’s full of easy consonant + vowel words that babies and young children love to copy.
There are also other similar wordless picture books that are also a great way to use your own exclamatory sounds to engage a child to say their first words.
9. The Little Blue Truck Series
These are so fun and engaging, especially for toddlers! They are great to fill in the blank with, to target animal sounds and names, as well as exclamatory sounds.
10. Where’s Spot?
Another well-loved lift the flap book that will engage babies and toddlers in simple language development.
11. Peekaboo Morning
This book is a fun game of peek-a-boo for both babies and toddlers that can be used to target names of caregivers and common, everyday objects. You can also have another family member try to read this to your child too and see how they engage.
12. Pete The Cat Series
Great for kids and young children, the Pete the Cat series has many books to target final consonant sounds plus resonate with a variety of interests and be engaging for children. Older students will like these too.
If you like books in this series, I would also recommend checking our usborne books for more children’s literature and lesson plans. A good tip to engage a child with the perfect book is to pick books and topics that they are naturally interested in.
13. Goodnight Moon
A long-time favorite for a reason, this book has significant repetition plus covers a huge range of exclamatory sounds to engage your child.
In Summary: Best Books For Speech Therapy
We hope this blog post and list of books and mini book reviews help you on your search in finding the best books for speech therapy. Parents can help play a significant role in the language development of little kids. Read to your kids as much as possible and narrate your day!
And if your child needs a little extra help with speech therapy, it is okay! It is not your fault or your child’s fault. The important thing is that they work with a speech therapist to address their unique language issues. Good luck!
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