I'm a speech language pathologist, and today I'm gonna show you how to say the Z sound, zzz.

When you say your Z sound, your tongue tip is gonna be behind your teeth, and your voice is going to be on, air is gonna come straight out, and it's gonna sound like this, zzz.

This bumpy section behind your front teeth, this is called your alveolar ridge.

That's a good starting point for your tongue when you're learning to say the Z sound.

So put your tongue up here and feel those bumps.

The backsides of your tongue are gonna be up too.

Your teeth are gonna be really close like this, and you're gonna turn your voice on, and air is gonna go straight forward, zzz.

Some people call Z the buzzing sound, zzz, because it sounds like bees buzzing, buzz.

Let's make the buzzing sound together.

Are you ready?

Say it with me, zzz.

Zzz.

Let's practice some more.

I'm gonna say the Z sound, and then you say it after me.

Are you ready?

Zzz.

You try.

Zzz.

You try.

How did you do?

You are doing a great job.

Now you're gonna practice 10 more times.

You're gonna see mouths on the screen that look like that.

Every time you see a mouth, say your Z sound.

Remember, tongue behind your teeth, teeth close together, air straight forward, voice is on, zzz.

Great job practicing.

Thanks for watching this video.

I hope you had a good time practicing your z sound, your buzzing sound, buzz.

If you feel like you need a little more practice, just play this video again.

To the speech language pathologists and parents watching this video, I have a great set of articulation cards, including the z sound, of course.

These cards all have the mouth models as a visual cue on every single card, and they have a student practice at the word, phrase, and sentence level.

So you can download that whole card set at pgspeechy.com.

You can also get super cool speech shirts like this one at pgspeechy.com.

So while you're over there looking at the card decks, check this out as well.