Book Title: Super Star Speech

Price: $18.95-22.95 print (depends on binding style), or less for ebook edition

Published by: Super Star Speech.

We have noticed some issues with Sophia’s speech.  A bit of a lisp sometimes, or substitutions of sounds.  Mostly, she just mumbles.  Honestly, I think she just picked up some bad habits from talking around a pacifier so often for so long; I didn’t really think she had any inherent speech impediment.  But she still needs to speak more clearly for others to be able to understand her consistently!  And I don’t want to frustrate her by just making her stop and repeat herself to practice something the right way.  I wondered about some sort of games or something to make practicing less boring.

Then this review opportunity came along.  I assume that Super Star Speech must be fairly new, because I’d never heard of it before.  It’s a speech therapy manual designed to equip parents to do speech therapy at home with their own children.  (Perfect for homeschoolers!)  The primary manual is what I tested, ‘though there are additional manuals available for the sounds R and L; S, Z, and Sh; or Ch, J, and Th, so you can address those more in-depth.

In the original Super Star Speech book, there are some essential, foundational tools to equip you to do speech therapy for children.  The most significant (at least for me) is the evaluation.  An entire section contains materials to test your child’s speech.  There is a series of images which the child is to name, so you can determine (without prompting him for the sound) whether he is able to pronounce each sound properly at the beginning, in the middle, and/or at the end of a word.  Unfortunately, my daughter had difficulty identifying many of the images so I had to prompt her, anyway.  The test still confirmed my suspicions – she can pronounce nearly all, if not all, of the phonograms; she just sometimes doesn’t.  The evaluation materials are followed up by a chart in which to record the results.  This process will tell you if your child is behind schedule on any of the sounds.  (Sophia is definitely up to age level, at least.  Even though she struggles with a sound or two, they’re apparently not sounds that should necessarily be mastered by her age.  This is helpful for reassuring Daddy and Grandma! 🙂 )

Suggestions are made for setting up a therapy plan.  Then the instructions are provided.  There are instructions offered for teaching each set of sounds.  Lists of practice words are provided, as well.  This is, of course, the primary substance of the text, but it doesn’t require much explanation – it just teaches you how to teach the sounds!

Finally, there is a section of games to make speech drills less drill-like.  For our situation, this is what I expect to use the most.

If your child has some speech issues, this is a cost-effective way to address them.  (It isn’t designed for severe impediments to speech, such as cleft palate or hearing impairment, but for basic speech delays.)  If someone else is concerned about your child’s speech and you think it’s on-course, it can also be an affordable way to confirm that a child is progressing normally!

Consider visiting Super Star Speech on Facebook (while you’re there, “like” me, too!), and use the coupon code “mamabuzz” to receive a 20% discount on purchases from www.superstarspeech.com.

This is a MamaBuzz Media review. The product was provided by Super Star Speech for this review.  All opinions expressed in this post are purely my own.