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31+ Free Stopping Speech Therapy Activities

I am beyond excited to bring you yet another great list of resources along with one amazing freebie of course. If you know me, crazy awesome freebies are my jam. This freebie includes a list of stopping speech therapy activities that you can use with your students. 

Stopping is one of those very common phonological processes that most speech-language pathologists will have to work on at some point in their career. 

stopping-speech-therapy-activities

Phonological Disorders

Phonological disorder speech problems are patterns of sound errors that children use to simplify speech as they are learning to talk. 

Children will take complex words and simplify them in predictable ways to make words easier to pronounce until they can articulate the whole word correctly. 

These speech production simplifications are called phonological processes.

If you’re like me and would love a handy little two-page PDF that covers ALL of the different speech therapy phonological error patterns, such as final consonant deletion, initial consonant deletion, or cluster reduction just to name a few then be sure to grab my complete list for easy reference.

Unlike phonological disorders, articulation disorders are just one sound error with individual sounds and are not observed in any predictable pattern, but instead are incorrect sounds across words and each position of a word. 

initial-stopping-speech-therapy-activities

Stop Sound

Are you wondering what a stop sound is in the English language?

The phonological process of stopping is when a child produces a stop consonant /p, b, t, d, k, or g/ in place of a fricative /f, v, th, s, z, sh, ch/ or in place of an affricate sound /j/.

Stopping is considered a normal phonological process that is typically eliminated by 3-5 years of age.

Language Development

If you’re wondering which phonological sound patterns are normal and at what age you can expect that primary error pattern to be eliminated be sure to check out my list of typical and atypical phonological errors along with their expected age of elimination.

stopping-phonological-process

Speech-Language Pathology

If you’re looking for different ways to work on your child’s needs when it comes to their communication disorder of stopping I’ve outlined three different methods below. 

Before just jumping right in be sure to consult with your child’s speech language pathologist as they will know which method will provide your child’s speech with the most significant improvement.

In addition, your child’s test results and language skills will help determine which phonological speech patterns to start with first.

3 Therapy Methods – Stopping Speech Therapy Activities

1. Minimal Pairs

The first thing I like to try when working with different phonological sound disorders is using minimal pairs for therapy.

Using minimal pairs in your therapy sessions can help your student hear the difference in the words and realize when they say the word slightly “off” they are actually saying a different word altogether.

For example, if you had the minimal pair words “peel” and “feel” you could then play a game with stickers where the student must request for you to “peel” a sticker off (this also works on language goals of describing as they have to ask for which sticker they want), such as a student could tell you “can you peel the blue star for me?” 

If the child or student said “feel” instead you could then rub your arm or point to a picture of the word feel and say, “you said the word “feel” so I’m feeling my arm, it is so soft.” This will most likely cause the child or student to become confused. You can then explain that they said a different word.

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SEE ALSO: The Best Handout for Phonological Processing Disorder Therapy

2. Auditory Bombardment

If a child is having a difficult time with their sound production then another strategy to reduce stopping for a speech sound disorder is using auditory bombardment.

Auditory bombardment is when the speech pathologists say a list of words containing the sound(s) the student is working on. This allows the child to hear the correct pronunciation of their sound or sounds. 

When working with young children you could also send a list of words home for different family members to read the list of words aloud to provide the child with even more auditory bombardment at home. 

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Pictured Auditory Bombardment Lists (sh vs t): chef, shake, shapes, shave, sheets, shiny, shampoo, shoulders, shower, sharpener

3. Cycles Approach

The cycles approach, developed by Barbara Hodson, is typically used with children who are experiencing multiple phonological process errors. For example, a student who is experiencing more than just the phonological error of stopping could benefit from the cycles approach.

When using the cycles approach a student will work on one phonological error for a short period of time like 6 weeks. Next, they cycle on to another one of their phonological errors. They will then continue to cycle through to the next pattern for a short length of time until each phonological error is eliminated. 

You can start the cycles approach at the word level and then work towards using their phonological pattern in conversational speech.

Target Words

Here are some of the primary patterns of different consonant sounds to target when reducing the phonological processing disorders of stopping.

  • Initial /f/ vs /p/ – “feel” for “peel”
  • Initial /s/ vs /t/ – “sick” for “tick”
  • Initial /sh/ vs /t/ – “share” for “tear”
  • Initial /ch/ vs /t/ – “chalk” for “talk”
  • Initial /th/ vs /t/ – “thank” for “tank”
  • Initial /th/ vs /p/ – “thin” for “pin”

If you need a list of words for each of these speech sounds be sure to check out my list of over 130 single words that are paired up to practice minimal pairs.

SEE ALSO: Stopping Phonological Process: What is it? [Free Worksheets]

stopping-phonology

31+ Stopping Speech Therapy Activities

Boom Cards

A great way to add some fun to your stopping therapy is to use boom cards. 

  1. Free s/t Minimal Pairs Hide & Seek Speech – Thanksgiving Theme – Boom Cards™ PPT  by Little Speech Shop is a fun, no prep game that can assist your entire caseload in practicing minimal pairs! This game is designed to generate multiple productions of minimal pairs, and is interactive! 

Conversational Levels

Once a child or student in the school setting is able to produce the correct phonological process at the word, phrase level, and sentence level they can then move on to working at the conversational level. 

Included in the activities are language skills like past tense verbs, sentence structure, parts of speech, responding to “what” questions, and summarizing using Wh questions. 

Video Game

Another fun way to work on the stop consonant sound is with a fun video game. 

  • 8. Stopping minimal pairs by Pink Cat Games is a great resource to find video games for you students to play and practice stopping minimal pairs! 

Pairs of Words

Using minimal pairs of words is a great way to work on the phonological process of stopping. I’ve gone ahead and gathered a few below for you.

  • 11. Minimal Pairs Activities for S and T FREEBIE by Activity Tailor can be used for articulation therapy and for supporting phonemic awareness. In this activity, students say and sort, say and dab, and answer What did you hear? 
  • 15. Minimal pairs – P and F by Meecca and Speechie is another great resource to use to practice drilling P and F minimal pairs. These flashcards are neat and colorful.
stopping-pairs-of-words

SEE ALSO: 29+ Minimal Pairs Activities Speech Therapy

Picture Cards

Using picture stimuli either on a piece of paper or with google images is a great way to visually show your students the different words they are pronouncing.

  • 21. T/F minimal pairs by Working on my Words is a pdf of flashcards to practice phonological awareness of minimal pairs T and F. 

S Blends

You can also use s blends or consonant clusters to show the child or student the different words they are saying. For example, using a stop sign versus a top or t-shirt. Below are a handful of resources I found on teachers pay teachers.

  • 25. S-Blend Cards (s-stops only) by Speech Therapy Tools are printable picture/word cards! Use them to facilitate the correct production of S – stop blends. 

If you need s-blend articulation lists be sure to check out the following:

Younger Kids

Here are a few stopping speech therapy activities that are perfect for younger kids.

  • 28. Stopping of /f, s/ FREEBIE by Teach Speech 365 is a no-prep freebie! There are 3 sheets total with 5 pictures of minimal pairs on each to practice f and s. 
stopping-resources

End of a Word

If you need phonological stopping worksheets that focus on the end of a word be sure to check out the following resources.

In Conclusion – Stopping Speech Therapy Activities

If your child or student is making slow progress don’t give up sometimes it just takes little bits of practice to make a huge difference. 

It can be as simple as a 10 min session with a lot of practice with one set of minimal pairs for example.

In addition, if you need some different articulation approaches and articulation word lists be sure to check out my complete section of articulation sounds with lots of practice words.

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