7 Fun Games to Teach Your Kids English at Home

If you want your child to be fluent in English, solely relying on teachers at school isn’t the best idea.

As a parent, you can do many things at home to teach your kids English.

Sure, you’re not an expert at it; you don’t have any teaching experience. But just a few fun, casual, at-home games, which don’t require “expertise”, can help you help your child.

Here are some of the common fun English activities you can try at home to teach your kids English:

1. Word Hunt

This game is exciting and straightforward. Plus, it won’t take much of your time either, keeping your little one busy for some time.

You need a large cardboard, an old kid’s magazine, a scissor, a marker, and glue.

Cut the cardboard and place them side by side. On one side, write down all the alphabets vertically. Now ask your child to go through the magazine, find out 5-10 words starting with ‘A’ and paste those words on another piece of cardboard corresponding to the letter A.

Ask them to do the same for all alphabets.

This will help them discover new words and expand their vocabulary.

2. Create a word

This is one of the popular English activities for students that help them revise the words they know and dig in their creativity.

The idea is simple. Take cardboard, cut it into small pieces and write alphabets on each piece. To start with, have 5 sets of each alphabet; like five ‘A’, five ‘B’… If needed, have vowels more times since they are used the most.

Ask your child to create as many words (of three alphabets and more) in an hour.

The next day, ask them to do better and create more words.

In subsequent days, once they start doing better, you can then take out a set of alphabets from the mix (i.e. now it would just be four ‘A’, four ‘B’…) This would make things more challenging for your kid.

You can continue with this game for weeks and even months. And every time, it’s going to be just as much interesting for your kid.

3. Match the meaning

Learning new words isn’t sufficient. Kids must have a proper understanding of those words. This is one of the English activities for kids that will help you with exactly that.

Take large cardboard and cut it into small square pieces. Write a word in one piece and the meaning in another piece. Shuffle all the pieces with the meanings. Ask your child to pick a piece that includes a word and then find its matching piece that includes the meaning of that word.

Score them for every right match. The more they score, the better!

4. Tell me what!

This is one of the most straightforward fun English activities that provide high learning value.

Simply blindfold your child and hand them different items. Let them touch it and figure out what that object is. Ask them to name the item loudly in English. For more points, ask them to correctly spell that item.

The more they score, the better.

This is one of those English club activities that work well when you have more than one child. The kids can compete to score more points.

5. Dumb charade

But this won’t be about movies. It would be about words.

It’s a perfect activity with the least effort and maximum fun.

Act out a word and let your child guess it. As they get the hang of it, progressively make the words difficult.

This will help them revisit and revise their existing vocabulary, boosting their retention.

You can make this game even more rewarding. Before starting, hand your child a list of words they don’t know; it could be anywhere around 30 words. Ask them to learn these words. During the game, you can enact a few of these words and they have to guess accurately. Every right guesses win them points.

This way your child can learn more new words and expand their vocabulary.

6. Word Marathon

This is another one of the simple and fun English games that your child will absolutely love.

Hand your child a piece of paper and pencil. Throw at them any alphabet and allot them 1-2 minutes to list down all the possible words they can come up with with the given word.

Play this every day (with multiple letters) and challenge your child to learn new words that can be added to their list the next day. By the end of the month, you will notice a lot of new words in their lexicon.

7. Watch good English movies

You might be doing this already. But if you don’t, you should start.

Watching some good English movies with your child every weekend can be an excellent habit, helping them not just learn new words and expressions but also exposing them to new cultures, stories, and experiences. It can be beneficial for their growth.

Besides, watching good movies with your kid can build a great home culture, bringing the family closer.

Some of the good movies to begin this journey can be the Harry Potter series, Beauty and the Beast, Home Alone, Gulliver’s Travels, The Lion King, Star Wars, Finding Nemo, The Wizard of Oz, Frozen, A Christmas Story, and Toy Story.

Final words

These are some of the highly effective English activities for kids.

So, make their time at home more rewarding by ensuring they are continuously learning even while having fun.

At LEAD Powered Schools, we offer students an exclusive English program (English Language and General Awareness — EGLA). The program is designed by experts with the focus to make students become independent readers, writers, and speakers. It leverages different techniques to make learning more impactful for students. To learn more about our English program, please go here.