About this activity
Fourteen pairs contrasting a fricative with the stop that replaces it: sea and tea, sip and tip, sock and dock, sun and ton, fan and pan, fig and pig, four and pour, van and ban, vase and base, zip and dip, zoo and do, shop and top, shoe and two, thin and tin. A child who stops fricatives is saying the second word of every pair when they mean the first.
How to use it in a session
Let the misunderstanding do the teaching. Ask for sun, hear ton, and respond to ton — the breakdown is what makes the difference worth producing, and it works better than correction. Show the contrast physically too: a fricative can be held and a stop cannot, and asking the child to make a long sound rather than a short one is often the cue that unlocks it. Eight minutes covers a subset properly.
What to listen for
Watch which fricatives are affected. Stopping usually hits several at once — /s/, /f/, /v/, /z/, /sh/ and /th/ — and a child who stops only /th/ is showing a normal developmental pattern rather than a phonological process. Notice whether voicing is preserved: van becoming ban keeps the voicing while fan becoming pan keeps the voicelessness, which tells you the child is substituting precisely rather than randomly.
Carrying it home
Pairs like sun and ton, or shoe and two, come up in ordinary talk. Asking which one the child meant, when both are possible, gives them the same feedback the therapy relies on without any correction.
Questions
- What ages is this for?
- Kindergarten through second grade, where stopping is being addressed as a phonological pattern.
- Is it free?
- Yes, all fourteen pairs play with no account and no card.
- What is stopping?
- Replacing a fricative — a sound you can hold, like /s/ or /f/ — with a stop, like /t/ or /p/. It is typical in toddlers and becomes a target when it persists past the age most children have outgrown it.