children rolling their r's

[cmarango]

My dd (5.5 yo) has been working through R&S Nivel A books (for espanol) and my dh commented last night that she is still having trouble pronouncing the r's.

 

I have found a few tongue twisters and some drill words (DRA, DRE, DRI, etc) to practice, but nothing has really helped.

 

Is this a developmental thing? She is getting rather frustrated with it and I'm not sure what to do.

[mommymilkies]

I have never been able to roll my r's. I do have a slight lip tie. Is a tongue or lip tie possible? Check her frenulums.

[DoubleAMom]

How do you like R&S?

[cmarango]

How do you like R&S?

 

It's working out well for my dd, but she enjoys workbooks. We do R&S 3 times a week with some additional readings from Nacho (a popular Colombian book). I think that it is a rather solid classical language arts program. It includes dictation, narration (by way of sequencing pictures of a story), and it has definitely expanded my dd's vocabulary. I wish that it was more secular, but I also don't think that reading a few bible stories is a deal breaker here.

[cmarango]

I didn't learn how to roll my r's until I was around 5, my parents threw me a party they were so relieved :lol:. Although some kids get it earlier, my understanding is that many kids can't trill until between 5 and 7.

 

Thanks so much for the reply. I think that my dh and I will probably have a mini-party as well. I hope that she gains the ability soon for her sake.

 

When we are in Colombia next I will be actively stalking my dd's friends to see how well they are doing. :lol: I should also ask my mother-in-law since she was a kinder teacher for quite a while.

[DoubleAMom]

It's working out well for my dd, but she enjoys workbooks. We do R&S 3 times a week with some additional readings from Nacho (a popular Colombian book). I think that it is a rather solid classical language arts program. It includes dictation, narration (by way of sequencing pictures of a story), and it has definitely expanded my dd's vocabulary. I wish that it was more secular, but I also don't think that reading a few bible stories is a deal breaker here.

 

Thanks for your reply. Do you feel like it provides an adequate amount of grammar instruction?

[cathmom]

One of my native-speaking teachers said her brother never really got it and so just avoids saying words that use it, like using coche for carro.

[Riverland]

nm

[Lucy in Australia]

We spent a little time teaching our boys Russian when they were small. In desperation, I one day told them to say, "batter, batter, batter, batter" really fast. Somehow it put their tongues in the right place and the double t sound in the word came out as a rolled "r". Then they "got" it. Please don't think I'm weird.:tongue_smilie:

[GloriaMS]

Hi, we are biligual familiy (romanian /english) and my daughter couldn't roll her r's until around 6, even though she would hear it all the time in romanian in the house. I think it is a brain thing, a lot of the romanian kids can not do it until they are 6-7. With patience and exercise it will come. What worked for us was to just make her repeat after me short words that start with R. It is harder to pronounce R in the middle of the word, that will come later. So I would say: r,r,rat r,r,roll, r,r,rim. It took us a few months but it came one day unexpectedly. We usually did this exercises in the car, when she had nothing else to do anyway, and they were fun for her.