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Oral Motor Activities
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Oral Motor Activities

Practice 1-3 of these exercises 2-5 times per day at snack time and in between meals to prevent fatigue during mealtime. Alternate activities each practice session.

Lip Exercises

  1. Make a smile and then say “ooo” “eeee”
  2. Lip pop: roll your lips over your teeth and seal your mouth closed then push your lips out fast to make them “pop”. Start with 3-5 of these if challenging and then work up to 15-20
  3. Drink something thick through a straw (smoothie, milkshake, yogurt, etc)
  4. Drink through a twisty straw
  5. Make humming noises

Cheek Exercises 

  1. Make silly faces in a mirror or take turns making a silly face and copying another person: Examples include trying to touch tongue to nose, stick out your tongue, pucker lips like a fish, stick tongue out like a snake, etc.
  2. Blow bubbles
  3. Blow bubble in a drink
  4. Blow up a balloon
  5. Blow a bubble with gum
  6. Using a straw or your mouth: blow paper, a marble, or cotton balls across a table or through a maze
  7. Blow out candles
  8. Roar like a lion or eek like a monkey or buzz like a bee
  9. Fill your mouth with water and see how far you can spray it, try to spray it into a container

Tongue Exercises

  1. Lick yogurt from sides of lips
  2. Hold tongue to the roof of your mouth for 5 seconds
  3. Hold tongue outside of mouth for 5 seconds
  4. Push tongue inside both sides of cheeks for 5 seconds alternating
  5. Place a cheerio on tongue tip and lift and press to roof of mouth, and bring cheerio to both sides of the mouth
  6. Do a tongue pop- suck the tongue up onto the roof of the palate and then pop it.
  7. Say la-la-la-la and ta-ta-ta and “n-n-n-n-n” and “d-d-d-d-d”
  8. Take a bite of food and use the tongue to move it to the front of the teeth, over to the left, and over to the right, and back to middle before chewing
  9. Work on tongue lateralization (moving side to side) by stroking side of tongue with finger, toothbrush, nuk brush, etc.

Jaw exercises

  1. Chew something very chewy or crunchy (i.e carrot, apple, raw vegetable, jerky, dried fruit, or taffy). Chew 3 times on the right, then 3 times on the left. Repeat until finished.
  2. Pick a chewy food and chew it as long as you can before it disappears and count how many bites you could take.
  3. Chewy tube bites: bite 10 times in each spot, far back right, right, middle, left and far back left. Increase chewy tube color for more of a challenge.