Games for Fun & Learning - Lunch Hour Live plus Question and Answer with Jennifer Tarle

Hi everybody, it's Jennifer. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. I'm excited to be here today. It's been a minute since I've been live. I've gotten several requests from people to restart the podcast and the live classes, so here we are. I am also sort of expanding a little bit and trying to do some more listening and cultural content. Last week, I had an entire series on Thanksgiving that was a lot of fun. People really seemed to enjoy that. So today, we are going to be talking about fun games that maybe you don't have in your country. So it looks like I'm live on my end. If you out there can all see me and hear me, please just let me know in the chat. I would appreciate that. All right, I'm going to pull my chat up too here. Okay, all right. So hello and welcome. As per usual, if you have any questions, please drop those in the chat. I'm going to be talking about some games today and also in the weeks ahead. We're going to be doing some fun things. I'm going to do a series, or excuse me, a live on Christmas decorations, one on Christmas cookies, and I can't think of the other one that I have scheduled. But it's going to be just kind of fun, kind of light. Oh, Christmas books will be next week. So I think that will be a lot of fun. Okay. Hi, everyone. All right. So let's go ahead and just jump right in. I have many games to show you today. Let's start with one of my favorite series. These are called Guess in 10. These are fun. You basically have a bunch of cards. People can play these all ages, all ability levels. So you get this set of cards and they are based around a category. So I have Animal Planet that I'm going to show you today. And then I also have things that go. So this is like vehicles and things like that. So you have these cards and they have different clues on them. So you go through the three clues and then people in the group have to guess what you are talking about. Now, with all of these games, there are official rules. But because I play them in class with my students, I tend to change the rules a bit to make it a little more group inclusive. And so you do have like some sample questions that people can ask if they're not sure about the animal. I have students just make up their own questions. You also have these clue cards where people can ask for a clue. Basically, what I do is I read off the clues and then see if everyone in the group can guess. So for instance, for this one, I mostly feed on insects. My offspring are called tadpoles. And I have a sticky tongue that I use to catch my prey. People can't get it that way. Then I usually go into the buzzwords at the top. They are jump, they are swimmer, and they are tailless. And then some fun facts that some people still can't get it. They live in fresh water, they are carnivores, four-legged, and they cannot be domesticated. This is a great way to learn vocabulary in a really fun way. I love that you have a picture to go with it so that you can see what the animal is. Also, you have the word at the top so you can get the spelling. Just a really fun game. Okay, so I see that someone is not interested. That's fine. We're going to move on to the next one. So again, we have that for animals and then also for transportation. And thanks for being here today. I appreciate it. Maybe next week will be a little more to your interest level. So the guess in 10 here, we would have some race cars and a bulldozer segue. So just like a fun way to work. If you're a teacher out there, this is a great game for your classes. And then just for families, this is a fun game. If you need a gift for kids, this comes in so many different options. Just really fun. I give this one two thumbs up. It's a really good one. Okay. I don't even know if they sell this one everywhere anymore. One of my favorite games is called Rhyme Out. And this is great. Again, you could play this in a big group. So you have easier and more difficult questions depending on the color. And you give clues and the person gives you the word that matches the clue. Then from there, all of the words rhyme, meaning that they end the same way. So a rhyme means that they end the same way. So for this one, we'll do one together. This is not dry. So it is wet. So now all of the words need to rhyme with wet. So the next clue is an animal you keep in your home is a wet pet. Those rhyme, they have that et ending. And then the last one, an animal doctor, vet. So you have wet pet vet. So again, easy game. And here's the thing. With all of these, these last two that I just showed you with Guess In 10 and with Rhyme Out, you don't really even need to buy the game. You could just make this up. If you are on a car trip with your family and friends and just play the game that way, making up the clues and then guessing the answer. Next one, I lost the box, is Guess In 10. It comes with this, I'm going to call it annoying timer. I don't, I don't like the timer personally. So I don't use it. Again, I'm using a lot of these games for educational purposes, so I don't use the timer. But what you do with this is again, I've got some cards, and you need to name something in a group, in a category. So name three animals that hang out in trees. And you have to name those in five seconds. Again, you can modify this. You can just say, okay, until I count to 10, or however you want to do it. If you're playing it with younger kids, same thing. Name three things. It doesn't really matter how long it takes them. You can help them, give them clues. Everyone in the group can chime in, and you can modify this and have everyone in the group name something in that category. So like for instance, now if I say everybody name a farm animal, we would go around. If we have five people in the group, everyone would need to name a farm animal. Great for working on vocabulary. So that's another fun one. Again, you don't even really need to buy this. You can just talk about it and make it up by coming up with categories to name things in those categories. All right. Love this one. Again, you can buy this, but you really don't have to. It's called categories. This is such a fun one. All right. So it comes with a set of cards. So you have a category, and then you have all of these cards that have letters of the alphabet on them. So you pick a card, things at the fair, and then you have to name something at the fair that starts with the letter P, and then something that starts with the letter C. So at the farm, I'm going to say it's like a farm fair. There is a cow, a pig, pop, which is another name for soda. R, I'm stumped, for something at the fair with an R, rides, and E, electricity. So you can really go outside of the box too, as long as you can justify it. It also is great for more advanced students. If you teachers out there are playing this game, they just have to provide a reason why that really works on language. Again, if you're in the car playing this or just at home, come up with a category, and then you go through the alphabet that way to play it. Love this one. Again, it's called categories. So that is a fun one. Okay, I see some people, Tiago, hello. I think you asked me this question just a few minutes ago on one of the comments. I haven't gotten to that one just yet, but I will respond to questions at the end here. Let's just go ahead and do maybe two more games, and then we will head to questions. Okay, this is one of my all-time favorite games. It's so silly and so much fun. This makes a great gift for kids. I also love this game because you can buy it. Of course, it's in English, but if you speak a second language at home, you can just play it in your native language at home. So that's really a nice option. So it comes with a bunch of headbands, and everyone gets a headband, and you put the headband on. Then it comes with all of these picture cards. So everyone is going to get a picture, and they put the picture card on their head. So if I wasn't teaching class, I wouldn't be able to see this picture on my head. So basically, I will ask a question about this thing on my head, and everyone in the group has to answer the question. So is this living? No, it is not living. Is this something inside of the house? No. Caveat, you can only ask yes-no questions. So that's kind of fun. You can play it that way, and then I need to guess it's a snowman. You can put a time limit on this. It does come with a timer. You don't really have to use a timer. You can also do this where people can just ask any question that they want about it, so you can work on those WH questions. And then you could also just have people in the group give clues to the person wearing the picture on their head. So many fun ways to play. This is a really fun game. We just played this this weekend at a family party. You can play this with all different ages. It's just a lot of fun, and it's very silly with the headbands. Comes in many different versions. So headbands. Love this one. This one is love. I've had this for a lot of years. It is a lot of fun. So this one is a winner. Makes a great gift for the holidays, for birthdays. Also, you teachers out there, it is worth it to get that. There's also a version that you can get on your phone, and I'll tell you that name in a minute. It's called Heads Up, and it's the same idea is that you put this on your head, and then everyone gives you clues, or you ask questions about it. You guess it, and then when you get it, you do that. If you miss it, you go up, and it goes on to the next one. It keeps score. What's funny about this is at the end, it shows you a video of everyone in the group trying to help you. Very silly. Very, very fun. Okay, let's finish off with my last two games here. Love these. These are for younger kids, but I'm telling you, everyone has fun with these. So let's start with Raccoon Rumpus, and then we will get into Koala Capers. So this is for a smaller group for like two to four people, and you get these fun game boards that are raccoons in their underpants. I just think that is so funny. Their little heads stick up, makes them really, really cute, and then you get some dice, and when you roll the dice, they have different colors, and then different clothing items. Okay, so you roll the dice, and let's say I have yellow pants. I have cards that I'm going to put out all of these different occupations that the raccoon can be, but the caveat is, is that because I rolled yellow pants, I need to pick an outfit that is yellow pants. So I have yellow pants, and I need to pick one of the professions or occupations that have yellow pants. So I'm going to pick the firefighter, and then I am going to put that on my raccoon. Your teachers out there, you can then use this to work on language and English to have the students describe what this looks like. Again, bilingual families out there, just do it in English and whatever other language you want. That's a really fun way to kind of practice both languages. Describe it, talk about maybe where you see it, what it does, all that fun stuff, and the silly part of this game is, is that if you roll the underpants, then your raccoon needs to take all of his clothes off and put them back out in the play area for other people to take. So this is Raccoon Rumpus. The game ends when all of the cards are gone, and whoever has the most outfits, occupations, is the winner. Love that one, and just as great as Raccoon Rumpus is Koala Capers. Same idea, it's just you have this cute little koala, and this one is fun because you can talk about locations and where the koala is. Just so much fun. This one is slightly different in that you have patterns on the clothes. So polka dot, zigzag, stripes, checkers, and then same thing, you have the different types of clothes. Just such fun games. Okay, so again my games today were Raccoon Rumpus and Koala Capers. Categories, rhyme out, guess in 10. You have like a bunch of different versions of these depending on what your interests are, and then five second rule. Again, a lot of these games you can just play, make them up on your own, and just have fun. But just some fun options if you're looking for a gift or just something fun for your family to do or teachers out there for your classroom. So just make things a little more fun and a little more engaging. So I hope you liked that. Before we get into questions, why don't you drop in the chat what is your favorite game to play either now or when you were a kid? What game do you like to play? Let me know. Okay, I'm looking here at the chat. I see some familiar faces. Hi, everyone. Thanks for being here. Okay, all right. I'm also going to open up just to general questions. We have about five or ten minutes, so let me know the questions that you have. So I see are the words continents and continents homophones? Yes, they can be. I will say those differently when I'm really thinking about it and I am really focusing on pronouncing that word specifically, but I would say most of the time those are homophones and are pronounced exactly the same way especially in connected speech. So that's something to keep in mind is that oftentimes in connected speech we do say things a little quicker and then we will eliminate some sounds. Anybody else have any questions out there for today? Okay, I'm going to drop into the chat a few things that you might be interested in. Before we go, I have an entire series on homophones. I get a lot of questions on that and here is the link for my homophone lessons. That is in the chat and last week I had a big series on Thanksgiving. I know that Thanksgiving is over, but I did a Thanksgiving dinner and talked about the foods and I also did some shorts on pronunciation. So that was a lot of fun. I had a good time with that. I also want to let everyone know that I started up a newsletter again and so if you are interested in that, I will also put that in the chat. Basically, this is a summary of the previous week. So if you miss things, you can find all of the lessons from the previous week here. I started this by request. A lot of people were saying that sometimes they don't get notifications consistently from Facebook and they were missing lessons. I do post new lessons every Tuesday. It's a homophone lesson. Every Friday is a question of the week and then I do have shorts typically every Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes I miss a day here and there, but I do have a lot of shorts. If you have any questions, please let me know and I will definitely try my best to make a video lesson for you. I'm also on Instagram and on Facebook, so you can always check out there. I post my lessons as they are live on there, so you can check those out. I'm also on Twitter and on LinkedIn. I'm on all the things. I think it's really important when you're practicing just to have things top of mind. If you follow me on social media, oftentimes it'll kick you back to YouTube because that's where I post my longer videos. At least you will get a notification. I post some things from the archives so you can see me as a lot of people say when I was young and see me way back in the day like over 15 years ago now. All right, let's see. One more question just came in. I have a hard time pronouncing words like fence because I hear it being pronounced as fen. Okay, I think what's happening here is it's getting a little technical, but when you have the letter n, you can see my tongue touches my teeth there. My tongue also touches there for that t sound. So when I'm pulling my tongue away from that n sound moving to that s, you might hear a little t there. That is why that is happening. Pronunciation is tricky because it changes based on the sounds around it and so that is what is happening here. I always say go for clear. It's really hard when people say I want to be perfect. Think about being clear and that is also going to help with your listening because even native speakers aren't perfect in their pronunciation. It changes based on if they're tired or if they're maybe distracted and thinking about something else or even if they're just talking a little too quickly, then pronunciation changes a bit. So just go for like good and clear and that should be helpful and that should also help with your listening as well. Oh, I got somebody telling me about a game. When we were young, we used to play a beautiful game. We chose a letter. Then we came from this letter with the name of a boy and a girl and the name of a country and animal and plant that all must start with the same letter. Fun. So that is similar to what I was saying. These games are games that you can purchase but you can do this just with your imagination and I love this game. You have a letter and then you just keep coming up with different things that have that letter. Like in this case, he said it is a boy, a girl, a country, an animal, and a plant. That's a lot of fun. Okay. Well, everyone, thank you so much for being here. I appreciate all of you again today. It was a little kind of informal and casual as I get these weekly lessons that are live, started up again. So thanks for being here and I will be here again next week talking about Christmas books. A lot of my students have told me they aren't really familiar with the story of Christmas and why we celebrate it. So we're going to talk about that. I have a whole carton of books that we're going to go through and just maybe read little excerpts and talk about them. So if you have a favorite Christmas book or a favorite book from a holiday that you celebrate where you come from, please be ready to share that with me in the chat. So everyone, you were all amazing. Thank you for being here. Let me know what you thought about this in the comments below and I will see you all again tomorrow for a homophone lesson, Friday for a question of the week. We're going to have a couple of shorts on the weekend and then next Monday I'll be right back here. Thanks so much everyone. You all take care. Bye-bye.