“Can you say that again?” I asked.
Adam looked at me, smiled and repeated it.
I still wasn’t sure what he’d said: his words weren’t clear enough.
It wasn't just Adam. We realised that many of us were finding it difficult to understand several of the children.
Though these children chatted happily with their friends, told elaborate stories and confidently shared their ideas, their speech was sometimes difficult to understand.
We were a bit puzzled.
A left-field idea
I discussed it with our head teacher, and she came up with an idea that, to me, seemed completely left field:
“Why don’t you watch as they eat their snack and packed lunches? See if you notice anything.” I did just that - I was interested by what I noticed.
Many of the children weren’t really chewing the apple or cucumber we offered at snack time: they were taking tiny bites with their front teeth and nibbling around the edges. Some were avoiding the harder foods altogether, sticking to banana. I also noticed that some children were dribbling more than we would have expected.
Most of the children’s lunches consisted of sandwiches, yogurts and fruit pouches: all soft foods that they didn’t need to chew very much.
It made me wonder: were the children getting enough opportunities to practise chewing different textures?
Where was the crunch?
Clear speech relies on more than vocabulary. It also depends on the strength and coordination of the jaw, tongue and lips. Chewing uses the jaw, tongue and lips in ways that are also important for speech.
So, we decided to provide more opportunities for children to chew firmer foods – we created a Crunchy Snack Time.
Crunchy Snack Time
Every day we offered foods that encouraged the children to chew: slices of apple, cucumber, pepper, celery and crusty bread. We cut them all very thinly at first so that they weren’t too difficult and off-putting.
We modelled chewing and talked about it with the children.
What I like about this change to our practice is that it’s not a speech intervention or a solution to unclear speech. It’s simply a small tweak to something we were already doing: snack time.
We continued to ensure that our practice met the Early Years Foundation Stage safer eating requirements, helping to reduce the risk of choking. A member of staff with a valid paediatric first aid certificate was always present in the room. During snack time, children remained within the sight and hearing of a member of staff, who would usually face the children while they were eating.
An important caveat
To be absolutely honest, when we started doing this, some of our staff (including me) thought we were sure that this tweak was improving some of the children’s speech. We thought we had evidence for it.
On reflection, of course, we have no basis at all for making a claim such as this. Who knows, maybe we noticed differences because we wanted to; maybe the children’s speech would have improved anyway, over time. Our Crunchy Snack Time isn’t a practice that we promote for reducing or preventing speech difficulties. But we still feel this has worked for our children and made a positive difference to them.
If you’re concerned about a child’s speech you need to pursue it on an individual basis through the appropriate channels - not treat it with carrots and cucumber!
For us, this was a simply a useful tweak to our practice. We were already offering daily snack time, so we simply started offering a greater variety of textures which provided more opportunities for the children to chew.
And, as a staff, it’s critical for us to recognise the huge difference between what we notice and what is evidence.
Want to know more?
Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework – see the Safer Eating requirements
Food safety - Help for early years providers – free online training from the DFE, including advice on food and drink to avoid, how to reduce the risk of choking and links to other useful resources for early years providers.