How To Teach English to Kids at Home: 15 Expert Tips for Parents

If you'd like to support your child on their English learning journey but aren't sure how to start, you're not alone: Plenty of parents are in the same boat! Luckily, there's an abundance of fun, pressure-free ways to teach English to kids at home. Keep scrolling for some top tips from an experienced language teacher.

Luckily, you don't need to be a teacher or even be fluent in English yourself to help your child learn the language. What matters most are the activities you choose, your attitude, and your approach.

Drawing from more than 12 years of English teaching experience, this guide is a collection of handy tips and strategies you can implement today.

How to Teach English to Kids at Home: Fun Activities

In my experience, taking a fun, stress-free approach is one of the best practices for teaching English to kids. This approach helps your child create positive associations with the activity, which can go a long way when it comes to motivating them to learn. Here are some activities and strategies for making this work.

1. Use Visuals

Visuals are invaluable in helping teach English to kids, especially when it's something colourful and eyecatching. Visual aids like flashcards, puppets, storybooks, and soft toys are great for helping them learn vocabulary, but everyday objects you find around your house can be useful, too. These visuals can help you teach things like colours, numbers, adjectives, and more.

Moreover, you can also ask questions -- tailored to your child's English level -- about objects, such as "what is it?" or "what colour is this?". Alternatively, for kids with a higher level of English, asking them to describe things in more detail helps with working on grammar points like adjectives and prepositions.

Extra tip: A fun way to get kids talking about visuals is to pretend you don't know what something is or what it does. Tell them you need their help to remember.

2. Sing Songs

Most children love music. During my time as a childrens' English teacher, I found that little ones pick up new songs really quickly, especially action-themed songs that get them moving. You can find plenty of songs for young English learners on sites like YouTube.

3. Use Storytelling Techniques

Storytelling techniques for language learning include making use of picture books, comic books, or interactive story books. Interactive books make sounds or contain different materials kids can touch, or flaps to lift up to find things. Reading to your child in English and having them guess what happens next is another method.

If your child is a complete beginner or only knows a few words, that's okay! Guide them to say new words with you as you go through the book by pointing and naming things.

Alternatively, have them guess what colour something might be or how many of something there might be in the next page. Using lots of facial expressions, gestures, and body language helps keep your child interested.

Extra tip: As your child's English develops, you can even encourage them to make up stories with you. One way to do this is to give a starting sentence or word, then have them add a new word or phrase. Go back and forth until you've told a story together.

4. Get Role-Playing

Acting is another great way for your child to express themself while practicing another language. You can role-play something on TV, make up a scenario and characters together, or use favourite characters as inspiration.

Extra tip: You can even connect role-play with another artistic activity: drawing. If your child loves to draw, ask them to create a brand-new character, draw it, then act as that character.

5. Use Media

Media like films, TV shows, music, and cartoons are incredibly useful for helping kids pick up new words and phrases. In addition, media like this can help kids get used to hearing how a language sounds and flows. To start with, you could search for the English version of a film or cartoon your child loves.

6. Make Grammar Fun

Grammar is something many language students dread -- especially kids -- but it doesn't have to be boring. Examples of fun activities for helping children with grammar include:

Rearrange sentences (all levels): Write each word of a sentence on a single card. Then, mix the cards up and have your child rearrange them into a correct sentence. To add to the challenge, you can set a time limit.

Treasure hunt: Place various types of sentences on cards around your home and ask your child to find a specific type. For example "find a sentence containing a verb.) This is more suitable for intermediate or advanced levels.

Error spotting: Write or say out loud some sentences with mistakes and ask your child to correct them for you. Make silly sentences for an added layer of fun.

7. Do Day-to-Day Activities in English

You can find plenty of opportunities to practice English while going about daily activities. That may be shopping, cooking, tidying up, walking in the park, or whatever it is you're up to. For example, if you're shopping, you can teach your child new vocabulary words for food. You could also talk about where things are, like "The apples are next to the pears."

8. Use Toys & Props

If your child has a favourite toy, you can use this to encourage them to speak English. This might mean asking them to tell you about the toy (colours, textures, sounds, names, what it does, etc.) or using it as a role-play prop. Hand puppets are also perfect for these kinds of activities.

Extra tip: Another simple but fun activity for practicing vocabulary involves asking your child to hunt for certain objects around the house.

9. Use Online Resources

As we touched on earlier, there are countless free resources you can find online for helping your kids learn English. For example, the British Council is one of the best resources for finding free English language cartoons, videos, songs, games, and activity suggestions geared toward children of all ages and language levels.

10. Work With a Qualified English Teacher

Learning English with a qualified tutor can help boost your child's language skills and confidence while providing you with a support structure.

A professional teacher can provide feedback on your child's language learning strengths and the aspects to work on. This is invaluable in helping you determine which areas need a little extra attention. You'll also pick up some handy tips and activities to do with your child at home.

We recommend taking a look at The Anglophones teacher page. We handpick the teachers we collaborate with based on their teaching qualifications and experience. You can use the search filter tool to find the best teacher for your child's needs. Alternatively, simply click on a teacher's picture to learn more about their qualifications, experience, spoken languages, interests, and more.

Practical Tips: Keeping Kids Motivated While Learning English

Learning a new language can be an intimidating prospect for children, and keeping them motivated can be tricky. These are my top tips for making learning English something for kids to look forward to and enjoy rather than dread.

1. Don't Be Afraid to Slow Down

It's perfectly understandable that you want your child to learn, but pushing too hard can be counterproductive. If your child is feeling tired or frustrated, know that it's okay to put the brakes on and take a more relaxed, casual approach.

For example, if your child isn't in the mood to talk about a book in English today, they may still enjoy simply having you read to them in English. This is a nice, slow activity for when your child is tired. They're still listening and taking things in but don't feel forced to participate when they're not feeling up to it.

2. Give Lots of Praise

Children thrive on praise, and it's important to acknowledge all kinds of successes. Whether your child pronounces a word correctly for the first time, sings along to an English song, converses with you in English, or simply makes more effort than usual, acknowledge it by telling them why you're proud.

What's more, you can vary the ways you deliver praise. Being specific lets your child know exactly what they're doing well. For example, instead of always saying "great job," you might sometimes say something like "Excellent pronunciation!" or "You told that story beautifully."

3. Connect Learning to Your Child's Interests

Think about the things your child loves most and use this to encourage them to speak English. For example, if your child has a passion for art, try eliciting some words and phrases related to drawing, painting, and crafts, or do some artwork together while speaking English.

4. Vary Activities

While it's a good idea to have a routine, doing the same old things every time can make learning a little dry. Try out a range of activities and vary them regularly to help prevent boredom setting in.

5. Keep Sessions Short & Regular

It's hard for children -- especially young children -- to concentrate for long periods. To help keep their attention, it may be more effective to have short English sessions regularly. Setting a routine can also help. For example, you might spend 15 minutes each afternoon doing a fun activity in English, then spend another 15 minutes reading together before bed.

Common Challenges & How to Approach Them

Everyone learning a new language -- from tiny tots to adults -- faces at least some challenges. These are some of the most common obstacles parents meet when teaching English to their kids:

One-word answers: If your child is in the habit of giving only one-word answers like "yes" or "no," try asking them open-ended questions more often. An example of an open-ended question would be "why do you like cats?".

Lack of retention: Reviewing regularly is key to helping kids remember what they've learned. For example, you might start a session by going over what they learned in the last session.

Pronunciation issues: When teaching a new word, pronounce it very slowly and break it down into syllables (e.g. "butt-er-fly"). If you're not sure how to pronounce a word yourself, use an online dictionary to listen to the pronunciation. Working on phonics is also very useful, and you can find plenty of tutors who specialize in this.

How Learning English Can Benefit Kids

A Child Mind Institute article written by Rachel Cortese, MS, CCC-SLP explains that bilingual children are flexible thinkers due to their ability to "switch between one language and the other." Other social and cognitive benefits may include:

Stronger communication and listening skills

Creative thinking

Memory skills

Development of cultural awareness

Boosted confidence

Common Questions

How Do I Teach My Child English Quickly?

Instead of focusing on speed, I believe it's better to focus on progress. Children learn at different paces, and that's okay. That said, working with a qualified kids English teacher can really help with progression.

What's the Easiest Way To Teach English to Kids?

Learning a language isn't something that happens overnight. My advice is to keep things nice and relaxed with a wide variety of activities and resources.

Conclusion: Best Practices for Teaching Kids English at Home

You don't need to invest in fancy equipment to teach English to kids at home. After all, the home is a ready-made treasure trove of toys, objects, sounds, smells, and tastes, all of which can be put to good use for the purpose.

I hope these tips have helped you feel more confident and prepared to embark on a fulfilling and exciting language-learning journey with your youngsters. Click over to our teacher page to start your search for a qualified in-person or online English tutor to team up with.