Interesting read from Pam Marshalla - The Oral Institute - "Van Riper and other developers of traditional articulation therapy regularly used a wide variety of tools/objects in articulation therapy when teaching dissociation, grading, direction, and positioning of the articulators for phonetic placement. Tools/objects were used when other auditory, linguistic, and cognitive means failed to stimulate correct phoneme productions. To call these activities "non-speech" methods seems to misrepresent the historic purpose objects have served in articulation therapy. Student clinicians need to be taught how tools/objects were used in phonetic placement, and professionals need to consider how these methods might help their clients with oral sensory-motor delay/dysfunction. More empirical research is required in this area. "
Pam has provided a summary of 86 objects that have been used for oral motor activities and she explains the stated purpose.
I have found pairing oral motor with sound production has been a successful strategy to help children develop the muscle memory to produce sounds - for example alternate blowing a horn, recorder,harmonica,etc.. then producing B, P, making a tissue move when whispering "puh", blowing through a straw and making a feather move. Check out the Flip Book from Super Duper. Each page has 3 flips of pictures to practice simple CV combos and is considered a staple in our program. Blowing bubbles (which encourage lip pursing and proper breath control) alternating with production of SH, CH, J sound has provided success for our children as well .