Help, I need ideas quickly. How do I keep 2, 7 y.old boys occupied for 2 hours a day minimum?

Question

I will be watching/teaching english through play to 2,7 year old Greek boys for the Summer break. They have a big back yard and a swimming pool but I need ideas for games we can play together where they will be learning english without realising it. Any suggestions will be appreciated, especially from people with boys. Thanks.

Answer 1

scrabble taught me how to spell :)

Answer 2

An ESL Teacher's advice:

Watch how much you talk to them.  Talking TO them is bad.  Talking WITH them is good.  Make sure you let them do as much of the talking as possible.  The more they do, the better they are.

Matt

Answer 3

Teach them to play monopoly.  Plenty of home concepts in there to learn English.

Or something that requires plenty of verbal input, and is of the right calibre for 7 yrs old, although being a game for older people, try dungeons and dragons.  You could play all season with the same game, and you only need to make up monster names each days, and be good at descibing the trail.  Try modernizing it, so you are chasing monsters around your local neghbourhood, and drag the kids through shopping centres to set the environment for example.  You could get through bundles of words in action with this, and keep the kiddies interested, as long as they get to kill the monsters, they will suck up the environment you put them in.

Answer 4

get them stuff like a baskitball and teach them how to shoot or how to pitch a basebal exe

Answer 5

If you use things they like, it will be more interesting to them.  Get items like a ball, get them in different colors, throw one to each other while saying the color-then ball. (red ball) repeat w/each.  Everything they touch, point to it and say what it is.  If you are playing blocks w/ 2 yr old.  Start with repeating "block" then stack them and say "blocks go up up up".  Point to the clothes they are wearing, say Shirt, shoes, ect.   Look into Occupational therapy, these are some excersizes of that.  If the parents allow it, having another child playing with them, and speaking english, will help.  Have Fun.

Answer 6

Get floatation pool toys , balls etc. Have them help with gardening, take a trip to the zoo...lawn darts, lawn bowling... they are going to learn english best by communicating with you on basic and ordinary things...

Answer 7

give them 10 index cards with short questions in English like "what is your age?".  Do you like to swim?  etc.

Have the answer on the back.

They have to memorize those questions.

Then using a beach ball in the pool, throw it to one kid and say, What is your age?  He has to give you the correct answer.  

then throw the beach ball to the other one and ask the next question.

Just do for like 3-4 minutes, and then play.  You can repeat at random times throughout the day, and they never know when you are going to ask them.

Then the next day hve them memorize 5 more sentences, and you can ask them from a selection of 15 questions now.

Make it fun and it will be!