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Minimal-pair games for speech therapy
Minimal pairs only work if the contrast is honest — the child has to hear that two words differ, and the game has to be right about which word has which sound. These activities run real contrast pairs and check every word against the sound it claims to carry.
Use them when a child is substituting rather than distorting: fronting, stopping, gliding, cluster reduction.
Who this is for
- Children with a phonological process rather than a motor-based distortion
- Preschool and early elementary children who need to hear a contrast before producing it
- Anyone at the listening and identification stage, before production drill
- Groups, where one child chooses and the others judge
Goals these target
- Identify the target sound in a word from a field of two or more
- Discriminate between a target and its substitution in minimal-pair sets
- Produce the target rather than the substitution when the two are contrasted
- Repair a production when the listener signals the wrong word was heard
The games
Sound Invaders
Nine contrast pairs — K/T, G/D, F/P, S/T, SH/S, CH/SH, R/W, L/W, V/B. Shoot the words with your sound, leave the other sound alone. Words carrying BOTH sounds are excluded from each pair, so a correct shot is never scored wrong.
Open Sound Invaders →
Sound Show
A quieter format: pick your sound, then choose it from a small field. Good for a child who needs the contrast without the arcade pressure.
Open Sound Show →
Bubble Pop!
Target versus distractor bubbles with identical labels, so the child has to listen rather than pattern-match on the picture. Includes clusters.
Open Bubble Pop! →
Word Tennis
Two players, one sound each, rallying words back and forth — a natural way to contrast two children's targets in a shared session.
Open Word Tennis →
Picture Spin Adventure
A 410-card picture bank where initial-position cards are always singletons, never blends — useful when you need a clean contrast without a cluster confounding it.
Open Picture Spin Adventure →Running the session
- Start with listening, not productionRun a block where the child only identifies which word you said. Move to production once they are reliably choosing the right one.
- Let the wrong answer teachWhen a child picks the substitution, say both words back and let them choose again. The moment of noticing is the therapy.
- Watch for words carrying both soundsIn any minimal-pair task, a word like 'cat' in a K/T contrast is ambiguous — it has both. These games filter those out of each pair; if you build your own list on paper, check for it.
- Keep the field small at firstTwo choices until the contrast is stable, then widen. A field of six is a memory task as much as a listening one.
Questions
What is a minimal pair?
Two words that differ by a single sound — key and tea, sip and ship. When a child's error changes one word into another, contrasting the two shows them the difference matters.
How do you know a word really contains the sound?
Every word in these games is tagged by how it is SAID, not how it is spelled. Scissors is /s/ /z/ /r/ /z/, castle has no /t/, and knee starts with /n/. Blends count as containing the sound, and are labelled as blends.
Which contrasts are available?
Sound Invaders runs K/T, G/D, F/P, S/T, SH/S, CH/SH, R/W, L/W and V/B. The other games let you set any single target from the full sound list.
Is this suitable for a child who distorts rather than substitutes?
Usually not. If the child is producing a lateralised /s/ rather than swapping it for /t/, a contrast task will not give them the feedback they need — drill with an adult judging is a better fit.
Related activities
Built and used by a practicing speech-language pathologist. Nothing here records audio or collects information about a child — see the privacy notice. Games run in any modern browser on a tablet or computer.