Horn, Straw And Bubble Programs


These programs were developed by Sara Rosenfeld-Johnson, MS, CCC-SLP, Director of Talk Tools Innovative Therapists International to serve as a portion of the child’s Oral-Motor Program (OMP). As she states, OMT serves as an additional building block not replacement to the more traditional therapy targeting specific sound production.  Diane Lewis, MA, CCC-SLP will sometimes chose to include one or more of these programs to your child’s therapy to make it easier for her to produce the targeted sound/s.  These programs all help to strengthen specific muscles needed to support respiration, phonation and articulation.  By requiring that the child execute one movement  15, 20 or 25 times assists with the development of motor planning skills for the jaw, lips and tongue which contribute to the ability to do so with speech sounds.

  1. Horn Program: This program has a series of 14 horns which vary on 2 planes, the first is the amount of strength required to make and sustain the airflow to produce the noise, the second, is the shape of the piece that is placed between the lips.  Ms. Johnson analyzed the advantages of each shape for the ultimate production of a targeted sound eg. the round ends can help the lips produce “round sounds” “o” in “no” and “oo” in “moo”.

  2. Straw Program:  This program has a series of 8 straws which are in a hierarchy beginning with the straw that is the easiest to suck from and ending up with a very long straw that is the most difficult to suck from.

  3. Bubble Program:  In this program the child must blow bubble against a surface that is progressively farther away. The child also is learns to sequence this action up to 15 times in a row.  In order to do this, the child will need to strengthen the muscles for respiration.