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My teaching experience tells me that outdoor activities can help a lot in teaching English. There are many activities I’ve been used in outdoor playing and I realized that children vocabulary raised very fast and became wider with the words we used there. For example, just a simple game such as throwing bean bags could be very powerful and useful to expand their vocabulary with new words. The children have to pass to each other bean bags by throwing and at the same time loudly to say: Catch! That is the best and easiest way how to memorize a new word. Repeated action gives results in short time. Next game about I would like to talk about is the sports field or taking different actions on the field. For example, we should put a lot of obstacles on the sports field and children have to avoid them by running, jumping, crawling and crouching. Every time when they start with the race we are gonna say very loudly what action they should use at that particular moment: RUN! JUMP! CROWL! CROUCH! Four words are more than enough for younger learners. The next game is a game based on, we can freely say traffic lights. The point of this game is that one chosen kid should hold one green and one red one frisbee behind the back. The other kids are waiting to see a green or red sign which means they can run forward him or to stop in place. In this game, they will learn colors and also traffic rules. If the kindergarten has playfield with some swings, or place where they can ride a bicycle that means more actions and more new experiences for them. They will learn words like: Ride a bicycle! or Swing! Ladders for climbing are more than great to develop their physical and mental abilities. CLIMB UP! and CLIMB DOWN! are crucial words for this activity and they can hear them very well because we are helping them usually to do this action because of their safety. Playing football or any other games using balls can bring new words in their lives. KICK THE BALL! It’s enough for the start. Using balloons suggest to them that they should first BLOW UP! the balloons using their hands, which includes at the same time fine motor skills and speaking skills. Playing in the sand with different tools, such as the plastic buckets, shovel, rakes, water, toys, etc. is a great moment for the children to learn new words and how to use them as well. There is one more game when children sitting or standing in around and have to pass the ball to the kid next to them. They need to say: PASS TO…(name of the friend who is standing next to them). All of these mentioned activities are based on movement and speaking skills. The key to everything is repeating these actions many times and practicing new words while they are doing them. Firstly listening, listening, listening, and then they will start using them in time of action. I‘m going to repeat again, that is my conclusion, learning new words should be without pressure and it comes naturally and without the stress of making mistakes. Young learners are stress-free and they don’t think about new words and how to make sentences, they are doing that naturally as it should be. We first learn how to talk and over time our vocabulary becomes richer and wider than before. Making mistakes is normal even in our tongue language, so playing games can improve and increase English knowledge rapidly and effectively.
