Speech Therapy Tips for 4 ½ year olds

We are going to explore speech therapy tips for 4 and half year old. At four and a half years old, children are confident communicators who can easily use most speech sounds and their grammar is generally correct. Here are some ideas to help develop your child’s communication skills.

At this age, children should be able to use conjunctions such as “and,” “then,” “so,” and “because” to join sentences together. They can retell simple, familiar stories by looking at the pictures in books and ask and answer a range of questions. Their speech should be easily understood with only a few sound errors.

By 4 1/2 years, children can:

Use many action words (eat, sit, run), describing words (hot, big, red, mine), and position words (in, on, under).
Follow instructions with four or more key words, such as “put your shoes and hat in your red bag.”
Use sentences of six or more words.
Use grammar words including pronouns (he, she, I, you) and verb tenses (is eating, jumped, will jump) correctly.
Use language to greet people, ask for things, refuse things, make comments, and ask questions.
Understand and answer what, who, why, and where questions.
Understand concepts including position words (in, on, under), size (big, little), number (more, lots, 1, 2, 3), colors, and shapes.
Link sentences together in simple sequences with “and, then, but, because, and so” (e.g., “I went to the zoo but I didn’t see a tiger”) and retell stories.
Begin to develop awareness of words, letters, and sounds such as their name.

How can I help my four and half year old child with speech?

At four and half years old, children are starting to become aware and interested in sounds, letters, and words. As a parent, you can help prepare your child for learning to read and write at school by developing their awareness of these concepts. Here are some ideas to get started:

Talk about your child’s name by writing, tracing, and copying it. Discuss the letters and sounds they make, and look for them in different places and words.
Play with plastic letters, make letters out of play dough, and use letter stickers or stamps.
Cut and paste letters and words from magazines and catalogues.
Look at words in the world around you, such as in shops, on signs, and in books. Discuss them with your child.
Make a scrapbook and paste pictures that start with the same sound on the same page.
Read rhyming books and make up your own rhymes.
Talk about long and short words and clap and count the syllables.
Introduce simple board games to develop concentration and social skills, like turn-taking. Start by playing with a child and an adult, then introduce another child to encourage cooperation, sharing, and being a good winner and loser.
Expand your child’s knowledge using books. Four-year-olds can enjoy books with a true “story” structure and can “tell” familiar stories back to you from the pictures. Discuss the structure of a story and how it usually involves a person trying to solve a problem. Point to the words as you read and talk about them.
Help your child learn to link sentences together. Talk about things you do that have a number of steps and take photos showing the steps. Help your child put the pictures in order and retell what they did. This is good practice for linking sentences in writing later on.

By following these simple ideas, you can help your child develop important language and literacy skills that will prepare them for success in school and beyond.

Important tips for helping your preschooler learn:

Get down to your child’s level, play face to face with lots of eye contact and expression.
Copy what your child does and add to it or expand it.
Repeat, repeat, repeat: Repeat words, activities, stories, and songs.
Start where your child is and gradually move them forward.
Follow your child’s interests. Use these to help them learn.
Care for your child’s hearing. Follow up on ear infections and ask to see a specialist if your child has more than three ear infections in a year.