How do you do speech therapy for a pre-vocalic "r" ?

Answer 1

Try and get the client to "growl" like a tiger. Often I have found that my kiddo's can figure out how to growl like a an animal and then I shape it into the /r/.

Also I model their production and contrast it with the correct production. If they say /wat/ and it's actually /rat/ I point out the difference just to make sure they hear the difference. I might make up some more like that and ask them to pick which one is right.

Something that also worked with my older /r/ kids is to actually use my hand demonstrate the shape of the tongue. I would tell them to feel the hump (or mid-posterior) portion of their tongue curl up against the roof of their mouth. I tell them push hard and feel their tongue up against the roof of the mouth. If they dont feel it then they're not pushing hard enough.

Some kids can learn to produce an /r/ by putting their tongue tip backwords towards that back of their palate. It's called a retroflex /r/ I think!

A sample word list for /ar/ initial might be "art," "Argentina," "army," "arcade," "armadillo," "arm," "Arkansas," "artifact," "arch" and "architect." Stick to only /ar/ initial words. Those work well for me. Especially "argentine" it allows them to really get a tactile feel for where their tongue needs to be before attacking more difficult words.

Last but not least, one of my favorite website as an SLP is one called "speakingofspeech.com" It has pages and pages of materials exchange that I have taken full advantage of.

GOOD LUCK!!!

Answer 2

I used a couple of tricks for 20 years that always did the trick (and I do mean TRICK). Lots of kids with prevocalic "r" problems are burned out on therapy and need to be fooled into producing it.
A fun activity is to say "Thar's a bar" ("There's a bear", but with a drawl). "Whar?" "over thar" "what's thar?" "A bar" "whar?", "over thar" "what's thar?", "A bar", etc. The kids have a blast with it, and don't even realize they are producing the sound correctly.
The other trick is producing "peeps". Peeps are basically short "seal barks" which get the child to produce the prevocalic "r" in isolation.
I try to avoid teaching kids about placement. It's too much information for a child that young to incorporate and only leads to frustration-- as if they don't have enough of that already!