Katja Neubauer, Junior Director of the European Initiative at King’s Pre-Prep School in Rochester, Kent

As a German teacher of 4- to 8-year-olds, I always find it useful to have a resource bank of games that I can use to help children to memorise vocabulary for different topics. The following ideas have proved very successful with children over the years. They can be adapted to different topics as well as to different languages.

Activities requiring flashcards with a picture and/or a word or real objects

Hot or cold?

One child waits outside the classroom while another child hides a flashcard or object. The child is called in and has to find the hidden item. The class helps by saying the word quietly if the child is far away and louder as he or she gets closer. This way the children will have repeated the word a lot of times without becoming bored.

Echo

Sing one word in a special tune or voice. The children have to echo you. Add movement for even more fun.

Train game

Place a card with an engine at one end of a line of flashcards, pretending they are carriages on a train. When the train starts in the station, the children say the words very slowly and make the movements of a train at the same speed. When the train goes faster, so do the words and the movements, until it slows down again at the next station.

Flash-reading

Show the class the flashcard or object very quickly. The children have to tell you the correct word.You could also just show a part of the card or show it upside down.

Activities without resources

Lip-reading

The teacher says a word in the new language by just moving the lips. The children ought to be able to guess the word.

Are you Kaspar? (equivalent to Punch)

One child is waiting outside the door. One child is chosen to be Kaspar. All the other children have to imagine themselves as an object from the topic which you are teaching at the moment. The child enters the room after being called in the target language. He or she asks, ‘Are you Kaspar?’ (in the new language). The answer could be: ‘No, I am the dog/the cat/the horse’ (in the new language). The child has to ask everybody until he/she finds Kaspar.

The tennis game

This game is useful for words that come in a sequence, e.g. numbers, months, days of the week. It can be played by children in pairs or by the teacher with the whole class. One person pretends to hit a tennis ball and says: ‘January!’ (in the new language). The other person pretends to hit the ball back and says: ‘February!’ (in the new language). And so on.

Activities requiring small cards for each child

Changing seats

You need two sets of cards with either the pictures or the words on them. Hand out one card for each child.You clap your hands and say one of the words. The two children who have the equivalent cards have to stand up, shake hands, repeat the word and swap their seats.

Turn the plate

For this game, each card is used in the game once. Each child takes a card. The teacher calls out a word and twists a plastic plate so that it turns on its edge round and round. The child with the right word has to stop the plate by pushing it on the floor before it stops itself.

Puzzle

This game is useful for various topics, e.g. face, body, clothes, etc. A puzzle should be prepared with three choices for each part, e.g.

• three different shapes of head;

• three different shapes of nose;

• three different shapes of eyes, etc.

Numbers from one to three should be put on the blackboard and the shapes stuck underneath. After singing ‘the head, the head, 1-2-3’ in the target language, one child is allowed to choose a number which indicates one of the shapes. By putting all the pieces together, a funny face, body or dressed figure can be created.