Books To Use With Kids With Childhood Apraxia Of Speech
Here is a list of books I recommend to use when working with preschoolers and other children with childhood apraxia of speech. Apraxia is a motor speech disorder, meaning a child has a difficult time with the fine motor movements required for speech. They know what they want to say, but they just can’t do it.
The treatment for apraxia is different than how we would treat a speech sound disorder, an articulation issue, or another speech/language delay. Apraxia is a motor speech disorder, so it requires a motor speech intervention. Children with childhood apraxia of speech need to learn and practice the motor plans for all the syllable shapes we use in verbal speech.
Children with apraxia of speech vary in their abilities. I have found that when working with preschoolers with severe childhood apraxia of speech, they may struggle to produce even the simplest syllable shapes, CV and VC words. Here are some books I recommend reading with these children to get some practice working on these simple syllable shapes as well as others. Here is a link to a free resource I reference when working with kids with apraxia. It is a hierarchy of the syllable shapes by difficulty.
Books To Read With Children with Childhood Apraxia of Speech (CAS)
Yummy Yucky by Leslie Patricelli
Yummy Yucky is a great book to use in speech therapy!
Words I work on with this book: ew, wow, no, ack, yuck, yum, yummy, eat, yes, yeah, baby, mmm
This book is great because it allows for lots of repetition of the same words over and over! And the kids LOVE it! Seriously!
No No Yes Yes by Leslie Patricelli
No No Yes Yes is sooo fun! All my kids are obsessed with it! Words To Work On: ew, wow, no, ack, yuck, yum, yummy, eat, yes, yeah, baby, mmm, wet, stop, don’t, toy, dog, cat, woof, meow, fish, sister, cut, head
Can you tell I love this author? Seriously, her books are amazing for kids with apraxia but also any toddler/preschooler!
Where’s Spot is a GREAT book that holds kids attention because it has lift the flaps! You can work on so many words with this book and get lots of repetition!
I love working on “No” with this book. On every page we can say “Is Spot here?”, then answer “no”. You can also work on lots of other words like boo, animal sounds, open, close, animal names, mom, ma, etc. This is a classic book for a reason and kids with apraxia will be able to work on lots of great words with this one!
Peek-A-Who is great for working on CV words with our little ones with severe apraxia of speech. Great way to practice all sorts of CV words. It has HOO, BOO, CHOO, MOO, and YOU. This book is super fun!
Why Cry? is another great book to work on simple syllable shapes! This book features the CV word WHY and CVC words like SAD, CRY, WOW and animal names PIG, CAT, MOUSE.
