/f/ Sound Speech Therapy:
How to Help Children Learn to Say the /f/ Sound

Some children struggle to say the /f/ sound in conversational speech.  We don’t typically start working on the /f/ sound in therapy until a child is 4-5 years old as many children still struggle with the sound before that age and will fix it on their own as they get older.

This page will show you how to use an articulation approach to help a child say the /f/ sound correctly.  That means you will start by teaching the child to say the sound by itself, like “ffff”, then you work on the sound in syllables, like “fuh, foh, foo”. After that, you work on the sound in single words like “fan, fix, off”, phrases , and then sentences. Once you’ve done all that, then you work on helping your child say the sound in conversational speech.

f Sound Articulation Therapy Kit

/f/ Articulation Therapy Kit

No-Prep Worksheets for Teaching a Child to Say the /f/ Sound

How to Teach the /f/ Sound:

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You can download the entire /f/ home program by clicking this button:

Breakdown of How to Teach the /f/ Sound in Speech Therapy:

  1. /f/ in Isolation: Student will produce the /f/ sound in isolation (by itself, not in a word or with other sounds)
  2. /f/ in Syllables: Student will produce the /f/ sound in non-sense syllables
  3. /f/ in Words: Student will produce the /f/  sound in all positions of single words (beginning of the word, middle of the word, and end of the word)
  4. /f/ in Phrases: Student will produce the /f/ sound in all word positions of 2-3 word phrases
  5. /f/ in Sentences: Student will produce the /f/ sound in all word positions of simple sentences

What’s Next?

  • At this point, you can either move on to work on another speech sound and see if this sound generalizes on its own.  Or, you can move on to our “carry-over and generalization” kit with this sound.

Sample IEP Goal for the /f/ Sound:

Student will produce the /f/ sound in all word positions in sentences in the therapy environment with at least 80% accuracy.

f Sound Articulation Therapy Kit

/f/ Articulation Therapy Kit

No-Prep Worksheets for Teaching a Child to Say the /f/ Sound

Carrie Clark, Speech-Language Pathologist

About the Author: Carrie Clark, MA CCC-SLP

Hi, I’m Carrie! I’m a speech-language pathologist from Columbia, Missouri, USA. I’ve worked with children and teenagers of all ages in schools, preschools, and even my own private practice. I love digging through the research on speech and language topics and breaking it down into step-by-step plans for my followers.

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