Games are a great way to strengthen your child’s language skills. I love playing language games with my children, especially when we are travelling. Without even realizing it, we spend a nice moment communicating with each other and my children can deepen existing vocabulary and learn new words. And the best, time flies by whether you are in a train, on a plane or doing a family hike.
These are our 3 favorite games the children played over and over again during our recent summer holidays. You can play them everywhere, in any language, and without any extra materials nor screens.
For preschoolers and primary school children
Who Am I
A fun game for the entire family that is great to strengthen vocabulary and sentence structures for questions. Furthermore, it helps children to remember and refer to specific cultural references.
Here is how it works:
Everyone takes a small sheet of paper and writes or draws a person, a movie character, an animal or an object. Then stick the paper on the forehead of another player so that he cannot see it.
Take turns asking questions that can be answered with yes or no. The other players answers by yes or no. ( e.g. Am I an animal? Yes. Do I live in the water? No. Do I eat grass? Yes. Etc.) A player can continue to ask questions as long as the answer is yes.
Take turns asking questions until everyone has guessed who he is.
Treasure Hunt
This game can be played in endless variations. The variation below is great to get your children to enjoy family walks. Your child can practice reading the hints. Older children might also enjoy preparing a treasure hunt by themselves, thereby developing writing skills.
Here is how it works:
Gather a couple of small sheets of paper. Write on each paper a hint or task, for example ‘Find a big tree.’, ‘Gather 5 different types of flowers’ or ‘Do a race, the winner will get the next hint.’ These hints will guide your children along the walk.
As you start the walk, give your child the first hint. At the next stop, secretly drop the next hint and let your child look out for it. Continue along the walk.
Think about taking a little treasure with you, for example a package of cookies for the snack. Hide it at the end of the treasure hunt.
From Toddler age onwards
Nature Hunt
A nature hunt is a lovely activity to spend a nice moment outside and strengthen vocabulary around the topics of plants, natural materials and insects.
Ask your child to find different nature items. Say for example: Do you think we can find 5 different yellow flowers? Can you find 5 different types of leaves? Let’s find 3 different types of insects. Etc.
Inspect the items together. Find out the names (or look them up if you do not know them 😊).
At the end, you could do a collage or why not a soup with the collected items.
As repetition really gets your child to remember those words, don’t hesitate to do the games over and over again if your child likes them.
This is how I am continuously helping my children to remember, revise and learn new words, sentence structures and cultural references. Language learning can be very easy if it comes as a playful activity and is part of your daily life.
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Hi, Nice to meet you
Learning and growing up with multiple languages does not have to be hard work. I am Maria, a mother of 3 kids, an development and education expert and Montessori homeschooler. Having lived as a family over ten years in Africa and Asia I know exactly how challenging it can be to get access to high quality educational activities. With my step-by-step playful learning method, I am showing you how to raise little happy multilingual learners with limited time and only using local materials.
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