Collection of games

Classroom shop

Level: intermediate

Age: children

Group size: whole class or groups

Use: to practise the vocabulary of shopping

The pupils provide the articles for sale – or pictures, drawings, or models of them, or simply their names on cards – and the teacher, to get the game going, acts first as salesman and then as customer. Useful phrases: Can I help you? Have you got a…Have you got any…? I want to buy…pounds/kilograms of…Please give me…How much is (all) that? Is that right? (when handing over the exact money), I’m sorry we’re out of stock/we haven’t got that, etc.

Aunt Mary’s cat

Level: intermediate and advanced

Age: any

Group size: whole class or groups

Use: a vocabulary stretcher (adjectives and adverbs)

This is an old party game played by children and adults together, the adults usually saying whether the word chosen is possible or not. Again, the name can be varied: My uncle’s parrot. The grocer’s horse. Bill Lee’s bulldog. My grandmother’s monkey, etc. The first player begins with ‘a’ and says perhaps My Aunt Mary’s cat is an alarming cat. The second has to use an adjective beginning with ‘b’; e.g. My Aunt Mary’s cat is a bad cat. The third may continue My Aunt Mary’s cat is a careful cat. And so on through the alphabet.

Adverbs can be added to adjectives: My Aunt Mary’s cat is an alarmingly fierce/badly behaved/carefully fed/dangerously thin cat, etc. Or…is alarmingly fierce, etc.