See and Learn Combining Sounds

See and Learn Combining Sounds is designed to help children with Down syndrome practice putting consonant and vowel sounds together.

See and Learn Combining Sounds supports activities that encourage attention, listening, and production of early vowel-consonant combinations and simple symbolic sounds. Building on the skills taught in See and Learn Speech Sounds, See and Learn Combining Sounds can help children learn to combine sounds as they progress towards saying whole words clearly.

See and Learn Combining Sounds can help parents, teachers and therapists support regular speech practice. Research suggests that practice and repetition are necessary to develop clearer speech.

Activities

There are two activities in See and Learn Combining Sounds:

  • Combining Consonants and Vowels - using picture prompts to practice putting two sounds together to say syllables or words
  • Saying Symbolic Sounds - using picture prompts to encourage putting two sounds together to say meaningful symbolic sounds

Suitability

See and Learn Combining Sounds builds on the skills taught in See and Learn Speech Sounds and is suitable for use with children with Down syndrome who are beginning to say consonant sounds in imitation and in babble (from 9 to 12 months), and older children who are starting to combine sounds.

Children can start the activities in See and Learn Combining Sounds when they:

  • Can say at least some of the consonants b, m, p, h, k, l, r, sh, t, w, z
  • Can say the vowels ar as in arm, ee as in knee, oo as in moon

Children will learn to say sounds in different orders. If your child is able to say some of these consonants you can start working on the activities using the consonants they can say with the vowels.

See and Learn Speech Sounds (the first step in See and Learn Speech) provides activities to teach children to hear and say single consonant and vowel sounds. You can continue to use See and Learn Speech Sounds to teach your child the single sounds they are not yet saying while starting to learn to put together the sounds they can say.

See and Learn Combining Sounds may also be useful for older children who are making word attempts but have very unclear speech.

Editions and features

See and Learn Combining Sounds is available as a printed kit or as an app. Both feature:

In addition, the apps offer:

Editions

Kits

Order printed kit

Apps

Download on the Apple App Store badge

We hope to bring back support for Android and Windows devices in 2024, though this is dependent on sufficient funding to work on updates for these platforms.

Related resources

See and Learn Combining Sounds is the second step in the See and Learn Speech program. The next step is See and Learn Saying Words 1.