Rainy Day English Games

Rainy days can be fun, but they can also be long. Once you’ve put on your raincoat and boots, splashed around in puddles, and maybe built a dam or two in the flowing water, it’s back in the warm house for the rest of the day. If you can’t stand the idea of your kids watching TV all day, you’re probably looking for activities they can do on a rainy day. Coloring books, play dough, and finger painting only last so long.

You know you want to make the most of this time with your kids, but how? Here’s an idea: bake cookies! But don’t just bake cookies. Use the process as a chance to teach your kids a little math and English. The math part is easy. Baking cookies requires a lot of ingredients, giving you ample opportunity to talk about measurements and fractions.

How to Use Cookie Baking to Teach English

The online english games might require a little more imagination. Here’s our suggestion: turn cookie baking into practice on some of the parts of speech. You can give your child points to earn cookies for each part of speech they can identify.

• Bowls, spoons, flour and sugar are all things, so they are nouns. Have your child name the other nouns involved in cooking making. Grant a point for each one.

• Verbs are action words. Have your child identify the actions you take to make cookies. For instance, measuring, stirring, beating, and baking are all verbs — and each is worth another point.

• Adjectives describe nouns. This is a little trickier, so give two points for every adjective your child finds that modifies one of the cookie-baking nouns. For instance, the white, sweet sugar and the yellow, creamy butter.

• Next, you have a chance to make a big leap — teaching your child the difference between adverbs and adjectives. Some kids struggle with this, but cookie making can help to make it clear that adverbs describe actions. Give your child two points for each adverb that modifies a cookie-making action. For instance, you might measure carefully, stir ingredients slowly, and beat the batter fast or hard.

Your child is bound to make some incorrect suggestions. That’s okay. It’s an opportunity to discover where they’re having trouble and help them through it.

Reinforce the Learning with Online English Games
You can then follow up this learning by having them play online English games. Interactive learning can:

• Reinforce what your child got right
• Zero in on trouble areas
• Give your child practice they need to remember what they learned

It’s easy to find English games for kids that focus on reading, spelling and grammar. The fun characters, bright colors, and interesting sounds capture your child’s attention, and keep them engaged while they learn incrementally.

Recent studies have shown that online games help students do better in school, so you won’t have the same guilt factor when your child plays English games online as you do when they watch TV all day. In fact, online games are so much fun that your child might forget all about watching TV altogether (but don’t expect them to forget about the cookies they earned!).