Working on the TH sound in speech can feel challenging. It can be tricky to think of motivating words with the voiced and voiceless TH sounds. These sounds, though, occur so frequently in our language! Just re-read those first three sentences… so many TH sounds! We could have our clients drill reoccurring voiced, and voiceless TH sounds for a whole session, or we can try to find easy ways to spice things up with our therapy. Nothing makes a session drag more than doing boring drills the entire time. So, I’ve compiled some of my favorite resources and engaging speech therapy TH sound activities, and it’s all right here in this blog post!
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Resources For Speech Therapy TH Sound
The first step, establish the sound in isolation and practice voiced and voiceless TH in syllables. Here are some helpful resources.
- Heidi Hanks from Mommy Speech Therapy goes over the sound itself and breaks it down by syllables, words, sentences, stories, and conversation.
- Meredith Avren from Peachie Speechie provides verbal and visual cues in her Video to show students for how to say TH. Play this, pause it, practice the sound and use the same vocabulary with your students while completing TH sound activities. This is also a great tool to share with teachers and caregivers!
- The Marshalla Guide has a lot of tips for how to produce a variety of sounds including voiced and voiceless TH.
- If you need visuals, word lists and tips for eliciting the TH sound, check out this Speech Sound Handbook from Peachie Speechie
- For syllable practice, check out my FREE articulation syllable practice sheet on this blog post. Use dry-erase markers or post-it notes to practice TH at the syllable level.
TH Speech Therapy Words Ideas and Activities
Now that your student has established the voiced and voiceless TH sounds, it’s time to start practicing the sounds in words.
- One activity I’ve done in the past shows my students two pictures (like cats vs. dogs) and asks them if they like or would rather have “THIS” or “THAT?” Print/write THIS and THAT, place one picture/item below each word, and students can answer THIS or THAT.
- Use these TH activities speech therapy digital folders to customize quick drill activities for your in-person and teletherapy sessions. Everything is in one place, including links to websites, YouTube videos, Google Slides, progress monitoring tools, and PDFs.
- Grab some pipe cleaners, beads, and pipe cleaner articulation for another one of my TH articulation activities.
- Print out TH speech word picture cards and use them for I spy games, drills, sensory bins, and more articulation activities that your students enjoy!
- For kids who need movement or play-based speech therapy activities when working on TH, use this fun game, “throw it” from Home Speech Home.
High Trial TH Picture Word Ideas
You can get a TON of trials for your students who need TH picture words using the TH articulation activity flipbooks. There is a printable version which is very engaging because kids go bananas for using dry-erase markers.
Or, you can use it on your iPad or Kami Chrome Extension with the No Print version.
To help kids see how long they have to practice their words, you can set a timer for 1-5 minutes.
I like to do a minute and keep track of their trials with these digital counters. After the minute practice, I can give feedback about productions and show them how many words they practiced.
We can set it again for another minute and follow the same procedure. You can get a lot of buy-in for how easy it can be to practice at home each day for two minutes after they see they can get 25-100 trials in two minutes!
TH Articulation Sentences Level Activities
Now your student is moving on up to sentences with our TH sound! Give these a try.
- Use this TH sentence activity challenge and send home practice sheets with your student!
- Use sound-loaded carrier phrases with flashcards, mini trinkets, or word lists. You can pair the I Spy sensory bin with the sound-loaded TH visual sentence strips.
- Compare and contrast similar nouns that contain the TH sound. For example, teeth and mouth or toothpaste and toothbrush would be great TH words to compare. If you need pre-selected compare-and-contrast flashcards, check out TH articulation carryover set.
- Also included in this carryover set are some Sequencing TH pictures.
- Use your speech word lists for TH to create carrier phrases. I use Home Speech Home or the themed speech sound word lists from the Themed Therapy SLP membership to find TH word lists. For example, you can write a phrase like, “I went to school with _______.” Then have your student fill in the blank. Use these free TH word list flashcards with this activity.
- Play a guessing game and use the TH carrier phrase “I am thinking of _______” or “I am thinking of something _____.” You don’t have to use a TH word list by having a sound-loaded TH phrase. You could even play a trivia game, and students are required to answer, “I think the answer is.”
Speech Therapy TH Sound Reading Passages
The key to getting high trials at the reading level is finding stories or passages with reoccurring TH words. Here are some resources you can use:
- Talk about the fiction and non-fiction TH articulation stories in this resource.
- Read sounded-loaded TH passages from readworks.org like Wild Things for both voiced and voiceless TH sounds or Helping Baby Sea Turtles, which is loaded with voiced TH sounds.
- Use Wonderopolis.org for more TH reading… learn How Hot is the Center of the Earth or Is Telepathy Real?
- Use Little Stories by Little Bee Speech for a TH articulation story.
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At last, your student’s TH articulation objectives have reached the conversation level. Here are some ideas for you!
- Search for how-to YouTube videos that contain TH. For example, you can search for “How to wash a thermos?” or “What to do if you have a toothache?” Use those videos to work on speech carryover while answering wh-questions, summarizing, defining vocabulary, and explaining the steps. You can use these pre-selected TH YouTube videos QR task cards in the TH articulation carryover activities set.
- Play the game or activity, “What do you think?” Give them a sound-loaded question, show them a funny video or topic, and have them share “What they think.” You can use the Epic or Fail videos from Ellen’s channel to have students predict what they “think” will happen next.
- Any “Would you Rather?” or “What would you do?” questions are great for sneaking in practice. You can get what would you do question in my TH articulation carryover set or find some fun questions from Erik Raj.
- Lastly, incorporate self-monitoring skills using this post.
What TH articulation activities do you plan?
Voiced and voiceless TH sound is one of the most visual sounds to teach. And hopefully, after this post, you’ll feel even more prepared to use motivating and engaging activities with your students. What TH activities do you do? Please share in the comments or tag us on social to share your ideas!