For some English students, learning grammar might seem a bit tedious. Young children don’t usually focus on the same subject for a long time, so studying a new topic can be a challenge. These activities to practice adverbs are perfect to incorporate more fun learning techniques that children will enjoy.
The following activities are perfect for preschool aged students and even for younger students. With these, children will have the opportunity to play while putting into practice adverbs in English, which are an important part of English grammar, since their main job is to give more information about actions that subjects do.
1. Adverbs Charades!
This game is perfect for big groups and it’s easy to prepare. All you need is paper, scissors, a pencil, and two small bags. First, grab the scissors and cut twenty pieces of paper. Try to make them of the same size. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but just an approximation.
Then, choose ten different action verbs in English and write each verb in a piece of paper. If you’re having trouble choosing the verbs, you can use these: talk , jump , walk , run , sing , gather , speak , throw , write , and draw . Fold the papers and put them in a bag.
Now, grab the remaining ten pieces of paper and write down ten different adverbs in English that can be paired with the action verbs you wrote before. It could be: correctly , badly , quickly , slowly , carefully , well , gently , fast , happily , and loudly . Fold these papers and put them in the other bag.
Next, a player must choose one paper from each bag and try to perform the action stated in the verb, as the adverb suggests. The person who guesses what action and adverb are wins. For example, a person can pick “walk” and “slowly”, so that player acts this in front of the rest for them to guess.
This is such a fun way to practice vocabulary, learn more verbs and adverbs, and associate their meanings with their representative words in English. Also, is the perfect game for the whole family!
2. Fun games circuit!
Learning by playing can be exciting for kids! They have lots of energy and enjoy doing physical activities. This is why preparing a gymkhana in your backyard or your nearest park could be an excellent opportunity to incorporate some English lessons for kids.
For this, you will need some sheets of paper to mark the spots where the challenges will start and end. The idea is to have different challenges that involve using some action verbs and adverbs as well. For example, you can have these four challenges: run quietly , jump loudly , walk slowly , skip quickly .
The challenges should be fun and entertaining, but also a good opportunity to practice some sports and sports vocabulary in English. The little ones could play individually or in teams, depending on how many people will play.
You can assign a spot to start, and then a number of repetitions for each activity, so the person or teams who finish all the tasks first will win the round. You can set various round to have more chance of having different winners.
3. How do you do it?
If you’re looking for a party activity or maybe a fun game to play at camping or at school, this could be it! It’s a game where children can learn the adverbs by talking about different examples of common situations that everyone can relate to.
The goal is to use adverbs to guess how the other person does a task. The idea is to come up with questions about the daily activities each one does and try to pick an adverb for each one. So, a player will come up with the question “How do I sleep?” and the rest will have to guess if it’s quietly , calmly , deeply or maybe lightly !
You can prepare some questions beforehand, like: “How do I like to walk?”, “How do I like to eat?”. Additionally, it would be a great idea to have some flashcards with different adverbs that are not so commonly used.
You can add words like: adoringly, briskly, awkwardly, hungrily or wistfully, so the little ones can try to be as creative as possible when giving their answers to the questions. With these, children will be able to learn more about themselves as they also practice vocabulary in English but in an entertaining way.
