[Recreation] Challenge! A roundup of tongue twisters recommended for elementary school students
Let’s all have fun and exercise our mouths!
We’ve put together some tongue twisters we definitely want elementary schoolers to try.
When you read them, you might think, “These aren’t hard at all,” but when you actually say them, you end up stumbling… Tongue twisters are such a curious kind of game!
You can compete with friends to see who can say them properly, or challenge yourself with harder ones to test your limits—there are lots of ways to play!
Even if you can’t say them smoothly at first, if you keep at it, your articulation might get better and better!
- Tongue twisters that will make you laugh out loud! Super funny
- [Diction Training] A Collection of Tongue Twisters to Improve Articulation
- Challenging tongue twisters: Introducing high-difficulty phrases and sentences!
- Nagoya dialect tongue twisters are exquisite! A fun collection where your tongue gets tied in knots with regional dialects
- [Easy] Quizzes That Elementary School Students Can Solve! A Collection to Nurture Wisdom
- Fun quizzes for elementary school kids: a collection of questions everyone can enjoy together
- Bursting into laughter! A roundup of Hakata dialect tongue twisters
- A collection of long tongue twisters. Also recommended for practicing announcements and narration.
- [Rec] Interesting! A roundup of wordplay games
- Perfect for pronunciation practice! A collection of English tongue twisters.
- [For Elementary School Students] Cipher Quiz: Fun Puzzle Riddles
- Recommended for upper elementary grades! Exciting indoor recreation and games
- [For Kids] Let’s Play in English! A Collection of Fun Recreational Activities and Games
[Rec] Challenge! A collection of tongue twisters recommended for elementary school students (31–40)
Please buy me a KitKat.
There’s a famous Hakata dialect tongue twister: “Kittokatto kattotte tte i’ttotta to ni nande kattotte kuren katta to, tte iwareta kenga Kit Kat kattokan to ikankan’tta to ni katteku’to wasuretotta ken, mata kaigiya ikan to ikanken ga mendokusaka.” It’s quite long, so even just reading it is tough.
In short, it says: “They wanted me to have bought a Kit Kat, but since I forgot to buy it, I have to go buy one now—what a hassle.”
Parent turtle, child turtle, grandchild turtle
It’s a tongue twister that simply refers to three generations of turtles—parent, child, and grandchild—and since each word is short, it seems easy to say.
There’s no complex scene description, but because it mentions three generations, you can sense the age differences and picture turtles of different sizes lined up.
As a tongue twister, the final “grandchild turtle” is the key point—the sequence of voiced consonants where “grandchild” connects to “turtle” makes it hard to pronounce.
It may help to shape your mouth clearly for the vowels and put some force into the voiced sounds.
I leaned bamboo against this bamboo fence because I wanted to lean bamboo against it.
Among the many types of tongue twisters, one that is known to be especially difficult is: “Kono takegaki ni take tatekaketa no wa, take tatekaketakatta kara take tatekaketa.” Put simply, it evokes the image of bamboo being propped against a bamboo fence.
Once you understand what kind of situation it’s describing, you’ll be less likely to get confused.
That said, it’s quite a long tongue twister, so memorizing it is no easy task.
Start by reading it repeatedly to commit it to memory.
Ottotto totto-tte.
I’d like to introduce this tongue twister that feels satisfying to say: “Ottotto totto-tte tte ittotta to ni, nande totto-tte kuren katta totte itto-o to.” On the page it makes no sense at all, right? It means: “I wanted you to save some Ottotto snacks for me—why didn’t you keep them?” There are many parts pronounced ‘to,’ so be careful not to get tangled up.
The trick is to insert brief pauses at phrase breaks.
Tongue Twister Challenge
Prepare a tongue-twister script and challenge yourselves to see how many seconds it takes to read it! Announcers and voice actors use this as enunciation training, right? If you search for “tongue twisters,” you’ll find plenty, and you can also create your own.
Add furigana to the kanji so that even first-time readers can read it.
The person who reads it the fastest without stumbling wins! Tripping up, getting stuck, and struggling to say it will get everyone excited, and if you can say it smoothly, you’re sure to draw attention!
[Rec] Challenge! A collection of tongue twisters recommended for elementary school students (41–50)
a very sick snow crabKenta Otani
It’s a tongue twister that describes a snow crab crouching and looking unwell, making you hesitate over whether to be concerned.
The prop card shows it squatting in a bathroom, but the fact that it’s hard to picture the situation from words alone is part of the fun.
The tricky part is the similar-sounding words—sugoi (amazing), guai (condition), warui (bad), and zuwai (snow crab)—which test your ability to articulate with big mouth movements.
Since mouth shape matters, it might even be good to exaggerate it on purpose.
Water-stealing horned owlKenta Otani
This is a tongue twister depicting a bizarre situation where drinking water that should have been left there gets stolen by a horned owl.
The image of the owl leaving while clutching the water—and the impossibility of the scenario—adds to the humor.
As a tongue twister, the key is the repeated “mi” sound, which tests how smoothly you can produce a sound that starts with closed lips.
It’s important to find a mouth shape that makes “mi” easy to say, while also trying not to laugh at the absurdity of the situation.