What are Tongue Twisters?

50 Fun Tongue Twisters for Kids to Improve their Pronunciation

Want to elicit some giggles in your children? Ever consider some good old tongue twisting fun where you watch them squeal with excitement as they struggle to get those words right?

Children learn best when they’re having fun, and this activity does a whole lot more than merely sharpen their pronunciation skills.

Any set of words that is difficult to say quickly and in a sequence, is a tongue twister. There are all kinds of tongue twisters for kids to go nuts about, ranging from interesting to completely senseless.

The Benefits of Tongue Twisters for Kids

Here’s a quick overview of some of the wonderful benefits tongue twisters proffer.

  • Strengthen brain-muscle connections. The brain has to connect every sound we make to a series of specific muscle movements.
  • A fun way to talk about words and their meanings. In between all that tongue twisting fun, you can take some moments to discuss the likes of vocabulary and synonyms.
  • They give kids confidence. Kids well versed in articulating tongue twisters find themselves more confident and questioning by nature.
  • It helps develop various skills. Skills like slowing down and the art of repetition.

50 Fun Tongue Twisters in English for Kids

Let’s delve right into all those cool sets of words that will hone children’s English learning and pronunciation skills!

Easy Tongue Twisters

It’s a good idea to get started with easy tongue twisters, before gravitating to the harder ones.

  1. He threw three balls
  2. Mommie made me eat my M&M’s
  3. Busy buzzing bumblebees
  4. Friendly fleas and fireflies
  5. Sing, ping, sling, pling
  6. Bella laughed till she barfed
  7. Annie and Andy’s April anniversary
  8. Two tried and true tridents
  9. Four furious friends fought for the phone
  10. Stanley stands sadly on the steep steps
  11. Bears breathe blackberries
  12. A happy hippo hopped and hiccupped

Funny Tongue Twisters

Tongue twisters that have your kids in peals of laughter.

  1. If you want to buy, buy, if you don’t want to buy, bye bye!
  2. I have a date at a quarter to eight; I’ll see you at the gate, so don’t be late.
  3. Picky People pick Peter Pan peanut butter, ‘tis the peanut butter picky people pick.
  4. If two witches would watch two watches, which witch would watch which watch?
  5. A synonym for cinnamon is a cinnamon synonym.

Short Tongue Twisters

Keeping it simple is the best mantra!

  1. She sees cheese
  2. Daddy draws doors
  3. Fresh French-fried fly fritters
  4. Red Buick, Blue Buick
  5. Selfish Shellfish
  6. Greet with Glee
  7. Ed had edited it
  8. She threw three balls
  9. Specific Pacific
  10. Big black bugs
  11. Stupid superstition
  12. Argyle Gargoyle

Rhyming Tongue Twisters

Some comprehensive tongue twisters, these.

30.Black background, brown background,
Brown background, black background,
Background, background, black, black, brown, brown.

31.Denise sees the fleece,
Denise sees the fleas.
At least Denise could sneeze,
And feed and freeze the fleas.

32.Brave, bleeding boys battle bald, biting babies,
Biting babies ride battle toys while bumbling boys brave bald biting babies.

33.She sells seashells by the seashore,
And the shells she sells by the seashore are sea shells for sure.

34.Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,
Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair,
Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn’t very fuzzy, was he?

35.How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if the woodchuck could chuck wood?
He would chuck, he would, as much as he could,
And chuck as much as a woodchuck would,
If a woodchuck could chuck wood.

Hard Tongue Twisters

Shorter, but even harder than ones that rhyme.

  1. Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks
  2. I slit a sheet, a sheet I slit. Upon the slitted sheet I sit
  3. Rugged rubber baby buggy bumpers
  4. Imagine an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie
  5. Send toast to ten tense stout saints’ ten tall tents.
  6. Supposed to be pink pistachio, supposed to be pistachio pink
  7. Six sleek swans swam swiftly southwards
  8. Opposite octopus ocular optics
  9. Shut up the shutters and sit in the shop
  10. Dark Dusty Disks
  11. Seven sleazy shysters in sharkskin suits sold sheared sealskins to seasick sailors

Well Known Tongue Twisters for Kids

Let’s finish off with a few well-known tongue twisters!

  1. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
  2. Betty bought the butter but the butter was bitter, so Betty bought bitter butter to make the bitter butter better
  3. Sheena leads, Sheila needs
  4. Five frantic frogs fled from fifty fierce bushes

At EuroKidstongue twisters form part and parcel of our activities that go beyond mere curriculum, to aid in our kids’ development. We go beyond this extensively curated list, to keep their minds (and tongues) well at work.