Speech goals are often a common thing that is worked on during music therapy. However, speech itself is so vast that there are many different objectives we can include in a session. One of my awesome little clients and I work on pronunciation throughout his sessions. Sometimes this client will blend letter sounds together or won’t pronounce a sound at all. My initial thought was to scale it back a bit and start off a little easier in order to reinforce that there are a specific number of sounds in different words. I wanted to start off with 3-letter words so that the client could first see what the mission of the intervention was and to build the foundation of the intervention so that we could grow to 4 or 5-letter words (and syllables) in the future. Not only did I want to show the client audibly the 3 distinct sounds in these words, but I wanted to show the client visually as well. My thought is, the more ways I can engage a client with a strategy, the better. Like everyone else during these times, I am having to “see” my clients virtually. Because I wanted to include a visual aspect to this intervention I created a PowerPoint that has several 3-letter words and the picture. This particular client loves the melody to “Frere Jacques”, so I took that melody and changed it to fit the need in this intervention. Below is the PowerPoint that you are more than welcome to use and/or adapt to fit your needs! I have also included the lyrics that I used as well, but again feel free to adapt as you need! Have fun!

3-Letter Words

(To the tune of “Frere Jacques”)

“All these words (repeat),

Have 3 sounds (repeat),

Beginning, middle, and end (repeat),

Let’s make the sounds (repeat).

That’s a DOG (repeat),

D - O - G (repeat),

Beginning, middle, end (repeat)

D - O - G (repeat).

[Repeat previous verse for each word]”

Sara Chigani, MA, MT-BC