Harmonica

[salondon]

Hello

Has anyone here used a harmonica to help their child blow and for lips excercise?

Any recommendations please?

Thanks
SA

Hi never done this but it sounds a brilliant idea . Dd2 has always used balloons and bubbles in speech therapy . There used to be plastic toy harmonicas you could buy they might be easier than a proper adult one . Dp used to plAy one and they can be quite tricky . Dd has a plastic trumpet that she likes blowing

DS1 has a little metal toy one that we got him from Sainsburys for Christmas. Seasonal stock, unfortunately. It takes a bit of effort for him to blow (and suck). They're a lot nicer sounding than party blowers, mind!

(could have sworn i hit post, last night!)

We used the plastic play cake candles to practice blowing. Is this primarily to strengthen the muscles around the mouth or tongue placement?

We have a couple of these ones from Amazon, that were in the dds stockings a couple of years ago. Ds does a good job of dribbling on them, but can't make a sound. He has done well with a kazoo though!

Sally - Both, she has only just started trying out these speech tools and we arent doing a formal speech program yet anyways.

Thanks for the tips everyone.

we are trying party bag fillers type quality for all this stuff for now

Salondon re. tongue placement - quite often SALTs use Electropalatography or EPG which is a device that sits on the palate with electrodes implanted. The tongue hits the electrodes and a computer programme tells you if that's correct placement. My dd used it for about 12-18 months successfully at the time. EPG

Ds salt used a plastic harmonica with him, he had now idea how to blow but learnt really fast with the harmonica .
Music making is his thing tho so he was really motivated.
She then moved onto drums so he would listen to beating patterns and copy argggggg my poor ears lol

Thanks Sally. I will need to look into it and desensitise her.

She is excited by the whistles for now. But can't blow and tries to shriek to copy the whistle sound. It's so funny and sad at the same time.