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“Toys put away, it’s time to learn” is not a very inspiring start to a lesson, is it? Playing for kids is the most natural activity. While playing, children do not just have fun – they learn about the world, develop logic, work out social skills. Therefore, the use of toys in teaching is justified and very effective.
Working with kids, teachers of the online English school often use the Lego constructor – colored cubes can be a great help when teaching kids English. Here are some ideas to help get kids interested in language learning.
Build the alphabet
Anything can be assembled from Lego blocks, including letters. And letters are words. And from words – whole sentences. So you can maximize the use of visual and kinetic memory. Yes, and playing with three-dimensional letters is still more interesting than writing the alphabet on a piece of paper.
Practice Dialogues
The game is the best way to practice spoken English. Play restaurant with Olivia’s Patisserie, Café+ or Parisian Restaurant, space adventures with the Mars Exploration Shuttle, chase the Joker in the Batmobile and throw parties with the Lego Friends series.
The constructor is an excellent platform for role-playing games and practicing dialogues. You can even use Lego figures for home theater: come up with a story with your child, build the scenery (Lego has a special set “Sets” for this) and act out your own play in English.
Learn the words
Thematic constructors are a real storehouse for those who learn new vocabulary. Using them, you can study colors, names of professions, animals, products, cars, interior elements and urban structure, learn to talk about daily activities and entertainment.
The words depend on the set – for example, Lego Duplo’s “Animals of the World” and “Big Farm” series are very convenient to study animals. And with the LEGO City Capital set, you can prepare for an overseas trip or a My City school tee.
Compose stories
Invite the child to draw a Lego character from the bag or box, describe it and write a story about it in English. So you can learn a lot of words and learn how to describe appearance, profession, facial expression and mood. In the course of the story around the character, you can build a whole world of cubes.
Get to grips with grammar
Lego will help to visualize grammar schemes. For example, a noun might be a red cube, a verb might be green, an adjective might be blue, and so on. This trick will help you remember the correct word order in a sentence faster – color sequences will remain in your memory for a long time. By the way, this visualization will work with adults as well.
Play board games
The constructor can be used not only for its intended purpose. Try playing with it in Pictionary: one player thinks of an object and builds it from Lego cubes, and the rest try to guess what it is in the allotted time. Of course, you need to play in English.
Lego is not just a visual aid: favorite toys help the child to relax and get carried away with English. Learning turns from a boring duty into an exciting game, and psychologists have long proven that we learn much faster on interesting materials.