7 Awesome Alliteration Articulation Activities for Speech Therapy

Seven fun alliteration articulation activities for speech therapy. A blond woman holding folders is pointing to the text.

Amazingly amusing articulation activities for speech therapy. See what I did there? You can make articulation sentences more fun with alliteration.

What is alliteration?

Alliteration is when a series of words begin with the same sound. To build your amazing alliteration sentences, string the words together with no more than one other word in between. But… you can cheat a bit for elementary, just tell your children the words with the same sound need to be close together.

Guess what? That means you’ll be creating sound-loaded sentences. Sounds like a perfect articulation activity for speech therapy, right? Your kids will love it.

With a little SLP magic, you can cover language goals too.

You can easily cover multiple speech and language skills with alliteration activities

Phonological awareness of beginning sounds
Using adjectives in a sentence
Using verbs in a sentence.
Sentence structure
Articulation practice

A few fun activities for speech therapy using alliteration

For younger children, you may want to provide pictures or provide a list of words with the target sound.

Older kids can have fun brainstorming words. List the words on the board or a large piece of paper. Next, each student can put together a sentence using the words, I’ll bet you get some fun variations.

Use alliteration in your articulation sentences.

1. Silly Sentences: Have your kids brainstorm words that begin with their articulation target sound, then combine them in silly sentences to say.

Make a list of the words on a whiteboard or large piece of paper so everyone can see them as you think of more. If your students are in a group, the whole group can help brainstorm, the more the better!

For even more fun, your students can write their silly sentences on a piece of paper, and then draw a picture to illustrate it. It makes a perfect activity to send home for extra practice, or you may even want to create a bulletin board display with them.

2. Traditional Tongue Twisters: Try favorites like “Sally sold seashells at the seashore” or “How much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” A quick search online for “tongue twisters for kids” will turn up a bunch.

You‘ll get plenty of articulation practice as your students learn some fun tongue twisters. Say the tongue twister as slowly as needed at first. Then have fun messing up as you say it quickly.

3. Nimble Names:

Companies use alliteration in their names, like Chuck E. Cheese, Dunkin Donuts, Krispy Kreme, Best Buy and Coca-Cola. Lots of cartoon characters use alliteration in their names too. Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Peppa Pig are just a few.

Why not have your students make up silly names for themselves (or for a character they draw.)

Make two lists. Brainstorm 1. adjectives that begin with a specific phoneme and 2. first names that begin with the sound. Then combine one word from each list to create a silly name, like Jumping Jacob or Rocking Rachel.

TIP: To be sure this activity stays positive, have students describe only themselves, and not other students. You want to be sure there’s no teasing or hurt feelings. If you have a competitive group that just might tend toward teasing, draw characters to describe instead and set a rule they can’t choose each other’s name for their character.

Articulation home practice your kids will get excited about

Of course, your students will want to challenge their friends and family to try the tongue twisters they just learned or sentences they made up.

Tell them that when they demonstrate the tongue twister or silly sentence for their friends, they’ll need to use their correct speech sounds. What a sneaky and totally fun way to get extra practice outside of your therapy room.

Build language skills with these fun alliteration activities

4. Have a Book Bash. Bring in books that use alliteration. Challenge your kids to read and list all the words with the target sound. A few favorite books with alliteration:

Alliteration Chips and Cheese and Nana’s Knees by Brian Cleary is perfect for explaining alliteration to your elementary students.
Dr. Seuss is known for his use of rhyme in his books, but many are loaded with alliteration too:
- The Butter Battle Book
- Oh Say Can You Say?
- Dr. Seuss’s ABC
- Fox in Socks (especially the page about the beetle battle)
Never Tickle A Tiger by Pamela Butchart
Books by Pamela Duncan Edwards, Including:
- The Worrywarts
- Some Smug Slug
- Four Famished Foxes and Fosdyke

5. Crazy Cards: This activity provides picture support for your younger students. Break out 2 or 3 sets of your articulation cards and mix them up. Have your students sort them by the beginning sound, then use the words to create a sentence.

6. Amazing Alliteration Animals: have children choose an animal then write a sentence about their animal using alliteration. This can be a fun group activity. Everyone can brainstorm adjectives. verbs and nouns to go with the animal.

7. Jellybean Jumble or Menu Mash-up Each student can pick a sound and use at least three words to create a new strange, and weird jellybean flavor. Who wants a crunchy cabbage caterpillar jelly bean?

Alternatively, you could create a menu with items like mouthwatering monkey muffins or cherry cheese chicken.

Need help generating words for your alliteration activities?

It’s easy to search online for lists of nouns, adjectives, or verbs that begin with the specific sound you’re targeting.

For example, when searching “verbs that start with “s” you may see suggestions like save, salute, see, sing, sail, serve, sink, and send. A search for adjectives beginning with “s” yields words such as silly, sad, safe, sassy, secret, simple and sensational. Combine those with nouns beginning with “s” such as sand, sea, sun, seal, sailboat, salt soap, sauce, and seed, and you have plenty of interesting words to string together.

Examples of using ‘s;’ alliteration in a silly sentence: The soap slipped and sunk into the salty sassy sauce that Cindy served on Saturday. So fun!