Let's Learn English! Topic: Kids' Toys! 🪀🧸🔫 (Lesson Only)

Well hello and welcome to this English lesson about Kids' Toys.

I thought that since Christmas was coming up in a number of

countries around the world that it might be a good time to talk

a little bit about kids' toys. This will be a lesson about

toys that I had as a kid. Toys that are modern and current. Um

some toys that are very old fashioned. Um but I think it

will be a fun lesson. Uh it's fun to learn all of the names

for different toys in English. I think most of these toys will

be familiar to you. I think you'll have the same toys in

your country. Um I do have to say one thing though. The

slides for this lesson are very colourful. I think kids toys

are often painted or the colours are usually very

vibrant and bright. So welcome once again to this very

colourful lesson about kids toys. So blocks probably one of

the first toys that every child has is a set of blocks.

Sometimes the blocks have the letters of the elf bit on the

side. Sometimes they're just plain blocks like this. And

they're the first toy you can play with where you can hold

them. You can stack them. Uh you can roll them. You can

throw them. Just don't throw them too hard. But blocks are a

very very common toy for a very very young child. Often the

block is made out of wood. So we would call them wooden

blocks. When a toy is made out of wood we use the word wooden

to describe it. So some kids have plastic blocks. Some of

them have wooden blocks. One of the first Toys that you have as

a child. And then another very common toy is a toy called

Lego. I put this as the second slide because this was my

favourite toy when I was a kid. When I was a kid I can't

remember when I got my first Lego set. But I do remember

quite often playing with Lego. Lego are a collection of bricks

that click together and then they stick together so you can

build things out of them. You can build houses. You can build

little cars because you can get wheels for them. Uh Lego is

just a very very fun toy. In fact I think my mom still has

my box of Lego from when I was a kid. I should go pick that up

because maybe I should reminisce and build something.

We also have what are called action figures. An action

figure is a small figurine that's made similar to look

like something someone in a movie or cartoon. So here you

see the Incredible Hulk. This is an action figure of the

Incredible Hulk. I didn't have a lot of action figures when I

was a kid. Um I did have Toys Soldiers when I was a kid. Um

but some people had action figures from GI Joe when I was

a kid and I didn't have one. I don't know if you know what GI

Joe is. Uh Brent from Speak English with this guy would

know what that is. But yes an action figure. So in this

current modern era you could have an action figure from the

Marvel movies. You could have an action figure of Iron Man or

Captain America if that was something you enjoyed watching.

A puzzle. This is what I would call a classic toy. A puzzle is

simply a picture that's cut into pieces and you need to

figure out how to put it back together. When I was a kid I

had a lot of puzzles. Now when you have puzzles as a kid they

have less pieces. Then a puzzle would have for an adult. My mom

loves to do puzzles but they have a thousand or 2000 pieces.

When I was a kid I had puzzles like this. This puzzle has

let's see here. I think about 3-five pieces if I'm counting

That would be a normal puzzle for a small child. I loved

doing puzzles as a kid. They were a lot of fun. This I would

say is one of the most common kinds of kids toy. And this is

a stuffed animal. We also in our house sometimes just call

them stuffies. But a stuffed animal is a soft toy. This is a

teddy bear. A very common type of stuffed animal. I had a

small dog as a stuffed animal as a child. And when I got

older my sister and I started to fight. Because we both

thought the stuffed animal belonged to us. But I was

pretty sure it belonged to me. It was a small red white dog.

Um and still to this day I believe that the stuffed animal

that I had as a kid was mine. But my sister still thinks it

was hers. Anyways once again a stuffed animal is a very soft

toy. Um almost has the same stuffing as a pillow. Um and a

teddy bear is one of the most common kinds. And then we have

of course all kinds of toy cars toy vehicles. When I was a

child I had toy tractors. But I think most kids will have a toy

car or toy truck. Um sometimes they're big. Sometimes they're

small. I'll talk about smaller ones in just a moment. Uh but

definitely when I was a kid I did have toy cars. But because

we lived on a farm I had toy tractors. As well. So just a

car but made really small for a kid or a tractor or truck but

made really small for a child to play with. And we had a

specific kind of toy car and toy truck when I was a kid. We

would call them dinky cars, Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars. So

here you can see them. They were about this big. They were

very tiny. I had a small collection of Hot Wheels cars

when I was a kid. By the way we have different names because I

think Hot Wheels and Matchbox are the name of the company.

And I'm not sure about Dinky Car. I think it's an older way

to talk about it. Um to talk about tiny little cars. They're

all the same scale. I'm not sure what the scale is. But

they were all about this big. They were a lot of fun to play

with. And you could get a track to drive them down and you

could hook the track up to a table and drive let your cars

drive down the track. That was a lot of fun. When I was a bit

older as a child I had a yo-yo. Again this is a bit of a

mixture of this lesson is a mixture of older types of toys

and newer types of toys. We would say the yo-yo has stood

the test of time. The yoyo is still a very common gift today.

Um we have a couple yo-yos in our house. I do like doing a

yo-yo. I should make a video someday of me yo-yoing. I think

that's the word for it. But the yo-yo is a spinning top with a

string that you can throw down and then pull back up again.

It's a lot of fun. I really enjoyed I actually learned how

to do the yo-yo when I was in university. Not when I was a

child. When I was a child I had one but I didn't really know

how to use it. This is a toy that I never had. This is what

we would call an old fashioned toy. This is a toy that people

had many many years ago before my time. The were things called

rocking horses. They were usually made out of wood. So it

was a small horse with rockers on the bottom. So if you sat on

it as a kid you could rock back and forth. Um I think these

were pretty common like in the 50s and sixties. I'm not sure.

I think my mom had a rocking horse when she was a kid. But I

did not have a rocking horse. But certainly you'll if you

watch an old TV or an old movie and if there's children in it

they might have a rocking horse. Um one of the other toys

you get very early on in life is called a rattle. So this is

anything that you shake that makes noise. This is a very

common toy for babies. When a baby is able to sit up and hold

things one of the first things you might give the baby is a

rattle. And that's why we sometimes call it a baby

rattle. We actually just say baby rattle. Um but a baby

rattle is something a child can hold and shake that makes a

little bit of noise. I don't have one in front of me but I

should have brought one. I think we have one in the house

somewhere. Probably another very very common type of toy is

just a doll. This is a common toy. It's usually just a small

person. Um sometimes like the far doll they have they're kind

of soft. Sometimes like this closer doll which is called a

Barbie doll. So the girl in the blue dress right beside me is

called a Barbie doll. A very common type of doll. Um usually

kids when they have dolls they will play house. When you play

house it means that you play with your dolls as if they're

people and maybe the doll gets in her doll car and goes and

get some groceries or the doll goes to her doll work or

something like that. But dolls are certainly a very very

common toy. If I was to say top five I think dolls are in the

top five as type of toy that kids play with. Um educational

toys. So I didn't have toys like this when I was a child.

But there are toys that are educational toys. This is a toy

that it looks like the child had to build it. It looks like

it has some electronics on it. It looks like they needed to

attach the wheels and they needed to hook up wires and

they probably needed to put a battery in it. And I'm sure it

drives around. So as they built this toy and as they play with

this toy they're also learning something. So we would call it

an educational toy. Um when I was a kid my brother had a a

think he had a science lab or little electronics lab where he

could learn how to make and program different things. It

was really really cool. Um he enjoyed building stuff with it.

A Frisbee. So a Frisbee is a disc that you can throw and

when you throw it it flies really nicely. Um it kind of

glides through the air. Uh you can throw a frisbee back and

forth to another person. When I was a kid I did have a frisbee.

Frisbees are super fun. When I was in university I played a

little bit of frisbee golf. So frisbee golf is where you play

golf but you use frisbees instead. And I think there's

something called Ultimate Football where you play

football American style football but you use a frisbee

instead. But at its simplest level it's fun to have a

Frisbee just to throw back and forth. It's fun to play frisbee

with a friend. Do you want to go play Frisbee? Okay let's go

play Frisbee. And you throw it back and forth. When I was a

kid a relative visited from Holland and he brought gifts

for all of us. And he gave me a kite. I had never had a kite

before. A kite is a small flying toy with a string. A

long string on it. And on a windy day you can go and fly

your kite. So the wind catches the kite which goes up in the

sky and then you hold the string and the kite flies up in

the air. Um it was a lot of fun. It was a big kite with a

lion on it. Um and I'm not sure the exact details but I had it

for I think almost a whole summer and then eventually it

did break. It broke. But I did enjoy flying my kite. So

another common type of toy that a lot of kids have is a kite.

We also had when I was a kid we always had water guns. So water

guns shoot water. When it's hot in the summer it is very fun to

have water guns. It's fun to have water gun fights. So you

fill your gun with water. And then you go and squirt people.

They're also sometimes called squirt guns. So water gun

squirt gun. A very fun toy to have on a hot day. But not good

to use the squirt gun to squirt water on your parents or

adults. Adults don't like being adults don't like it when

little kids run around with water guns and shoot them with

water. We also as kids sometimes just had toy guns.

Toy guns are sometimes futuristic. It might look like

a laser gun. Sometimes it just looks kind of like a real gun

but sometimes you would play different games. Uh you would

play cops and robbers. And so cops and rob is when some kids

pretend they're the robbers and other kids try to catch them.

But definitely we do have different types of toys. Some

are a little strange. It is a little strange to me that you

would make a toy out of something as destructive as a

gun but we do have them. And then there's something called a

Nerf gun. So I'm not sure if you've ever had a Nerf gun. It

shoots a very soft foam projectile. Um and we actually

own this very nerf gun. It is kind of fun because it has a

suction cup on the end. So the projectile or bullet will stick

to the wall when you fire it. So Nerf gun. Very fun to play

with. Um if you have a target on the wall, it's fun to shoot

the Nerf gun at the target. So as I mentioned before we

sometimes have wooden toys. It could be wooden blocks. It

could be a wooden train set. Wooden train sets are actually

very common still. We have an entire wooden train set at our

house still. Uh it's from Thomas the tank engine I think.

Thomas yes. Um my kids loved playing with it. The tracks

were made of wood and would connect together. And then they

could drive their little wooden train on the train track. So

wooden toy Toys are still very popular. Um and there's other

wooden toys as well. There's a toy where you have a ball on a

string and you have a wooden cup and you have to try and get

the ball into the cup. Wooden toys are still good and still

fun. So I never had a radio controlled car when I was a

child but my younger brother did. I think they were invented

sometime between when I was a teenager and he was still a

kid. So he had a radio controlled car. We sometimes

call them remote controlled cars. Um but basically this is

a car that you can drive using a controller. The car has

batteries in it. And you can drive the car around the room

using the controller. Um I think there's all types of

controllers. My muscle memory said this is how you control

it. So we must have had a controller like that. Um but

lots of fun. Uh when the batteries are dead you recharge

the batteries. Um but it lets you drive a car around. And

have a lot of fun and you can do little jumps with the car

and those kinds of things. So this is probably the most

common type of toy right now and some people would say it's

not a toy but I think it's a toy and it's called a gaming

console. Some people have a PlayStation, some people have

an Xbox, some people have a Switch, a Nintendo Switch or an

older console. This is something you connect to your

television and you put games in it or you download games onto

it. You might have a cartridge that you put in or you might

down load games from the internet and then you use a

controller to play a game on your television. Um we have had

a number of different consoles. Um usually the Nintendo console

was the most popular. I think we had a GameCube and then we

had a Nintendo Wii and now we have a Nintendo Switch. So a

very common toy but the only thing I don't like is I feel

like this replaced a lot of other really good toys. A lot

of kids now just play games and they don't play with their

yo-yo or their frisbee. Um or their radio controlled car. And

if you play a game on a console you buy a video game. So we

sometimes during Christmas break play Mario Kart with our

kids. We're not good enough. Jen and I usually lose. But

after a few days we do get a little bit better. Um Just

takes time to relearn how to play it every year. Um and

another common toy is to have a toy kitchen. So when our kids

were young we had a toy kitchen. It looked a little bit

like this. It had a toy microwave and a toy mixer and a

toy coffee maker and a toy toaster. Uh and it also had toy

dishes, cups and plates. And then sometimes our kids would

play house as well using the toy kitchen. They would pretend

they were making breakfast. They would pretend that they

were eating lunch. Um they would do a lot of fun stuff

like that. So a toy kitchen is just another I guess a

collection of different toys. You you certainly have your toy

cups in your toy mixer and everything like that. So toy

kitchen lots of fun. Our kids really enjoyed playing in their

toy kitchen when they were little. Sometimes kids have a

tea set. A tea set is simply all of the same things you

would use as an adult. But they're either made out of wood

or plastic and much smaller. So that kids can pretend to have

tea. They can have a little party with their toy T set. So

we definitely had a toy T set in our house. Our children

played with it a lot. Some people like to play with model

trains. When I was a child we actually had a model train set.

And it was very very fun. We had a big table. And we could

set up all of the tracks. And we had a toy train with toy

train cars. And then we had a little electric controller and

you could drive the train around the track. It was very

Very cool. Um it was really nice because I would imagine

different things happening on the toy train like the

conductor would stop the train and I would just tell little

stories to myself while I played with my toy train set or

model train. It was a lot of fun. A lot of kids will have

tub toys. Tub toys are toys that you play with when you

have a bath. That you play with when you're in the tub. Usually

they look like this. They're soft. They usually sometimes

you can fill them with water and squirt water. Um but tub

toys are a lot of fun for kids. When they're having a bath

there's lots of bubbles from the soap and they can play with

their tub toys while they're in the tub while they are taking a

bath. And then we also have sandbox toys which are also

beach toys. You can take these toys to the beach. By the way a

sandbox is something like this. It's an area in your yard.

Where you put some sand for kids to play with. Sand is very

fun to play with. You can dig in the sand. You can build

things out of the sand. You can do sand sculptures. Um but

certainly sandbox toys are things like little shovels. A

little pale, a little dump all of the things that you would

enjoy while playing in the sandbox. And then of course

there's the bike. I would put this on as one of the top five

toys. Uh I like bikes. I like it when kids bike around. I

like it when they enjoy the outdoors by riding their bike.

And there are all different kinds of bikes for kids.

There's super tiny bikes for really little kids all the way

up to bigger bikes that they can use when they are a

teenager. Now there are a a type of toy. There is a type of

toy called a stacking toy. Um there are toys where you can

build towers. Even blocks could be considered a stacking toy.

But this is something that very young children learn to do.

It's good for their brain. They learn to take different wooden

objects or plastic objects and stack them. Uh that toy over

there I think is a very common toy that kids play with that

parents give them and we would a stacking toy. Another top 5

toy. The ball. There are all different kinds of balls in the

world. Uh here you see a football, a basketball, a

soccer ball, and a baseball. Um they're not actual size though.

I think these are small plastic versions. But it's very common

if you were to look in a kid's toy box. There's probably a

ball in there somewhere. Uh small one, a bigger one. Um

it's really fun to kick a ball, throw a ball, hit a ball, a

ball a very very very common type of toy. Another top five I

would say. Now, we want our children to express themselves

artistically. We want children to be creative and one of the

ways we do that is by giving them crayons so that they can

color. This child is coloring. This child is using crayons to

color. That is the verb we used. Um I'm going to do some

coloring. He's going to color in his coloring book. So, here

you see crayons are small things you can draw with. They

come in different colors. Usually, they're made of of wax

or a waxy substance. Um and they are just one of the first

things a kid will use when they start to draw and start to be

creative. A Rubik's cube. This is a toy I had as a child. I

could do the Rubik's Cube in less than 3 minutes. Currently

one of my children can do the Rubik's Cube in about a minute.

And I have forgotten how to solve the Rubik's Cube. The

Rubik's Cube was very popular when I was a child. It was a

must have toy when I was about nine or ten. Um a must have toy

is the toy that every child wants that year for Christmas.

It's basically a cube where you can turn all the sides. And

when you mix it up there's different colours everywhere.

And when you solve it each side of the cube has the same colour

on it. I loved doing the Rubik's Cube. I might relearn

the Rubik's Cube this winter. Um I think that might be good

for my brain to relearn how to do the Rubik's Cube. Another

common toy would be the slinky. The slinky is either a metal or

plastic spring. And it will actually if you put it at the

top of a stairs and you start the slinky it will walk down

the stairs by itself. Or you can have it in your hands like

this. And it goes back and forth and makes a very funny

interesting noise. Um I didn't have a slinky as a kid but my

sister did and I think my brother did. There was there

was always a slinky somewhere in the house. And it was a

super fun toy. And here we have the cardboard box. When you buy

something as a parent when you buy something like a

refrigerator or a stove or even a computer it comes in a box

and sometimes kids just like playing in the box. They like

pretending it's a fort. They like pretending it's a

spaceship. Sometimes they'll colour on the side of the box.

Uh sometimes they'll cut holes in the box to make windows. But

an a plain old cardboard box. A big cardboard box can be an

awesome toy for kids. So if you're a parent don't throw the

big boxes out. Uh give them to your kids at least for a week

or two to play with. I'm sure they will enjoy it. And then we

have the board game. Uh a board game is a game that you play on

a table with other players. A board game has rules. A board

game is something you can win. So when you play a board game

you try to win. You learn the rule and you use different

strategies to try and win the game. I like playing scrabble.

My mom loves playing scrabble. I cannot beat my mom at

scrabble. She's too good. But Scrabble is a board game where

you try to make different words and they can connect together

if they share a letter. So scrabble is a fun game to play.

Uh you should play it with other people who are learning

English someday. It's a great way to learn English as well.

You learn some new words. Play dough. So Play Doh is I think

it's also called plasticine. But it's a very soft dough.

Dough is something that you make when you're making bread

when you mix water and flour you get dough. But we also have

this type of dough which is for kids to play with. It comes in

different colours. They can make little things out of it.

They can make a little dinosaur or a little dog because they

can mold the clay. Any way they want. So Play Doh is a very fun

toy. Um just don't mix all the colours together. That's always

a bad thing. You might have had a toy robot as a kid. Depends

how old you are. When I was a kid there were they were just

starting to have toy robots but they weren't really robots. But

a robot is kind of a little toy you might wind it up and it

walks or it might have batteries and you push a button

and it walks and maybe it's arms move. Maybe it talks in a

robot voice. Um so it's not a real robot. It doesn't clean

your house for you. Uh but it is certainly it looks like a

robot. It probably has flashing lights and buttons and probably

does. It should probably at least walk I would think. When

I was a kid I entered a colouring contest. The local

hardware store had a colouring contest and my sister and I

drew pictures. I drew a picture of purple mountains. I remember

and we submitted it and then we won the coloring contest and

the prize was an etches sketch. An etches sketch is a really

old toy where you turn two knobs and it draws a picture on

the screen but you you you have to draw it in one complete

line. So one knob moves the line up. The other knob boosts

the line over and then you can by turning both knobs you can

draw and then when you don't like what you've drawn or you

want to it. You turn it upside down and shake it. And then

when you put it down again you can start drawing again. I

loved my etch a sketch. I think because at that age it was

kind of like a computer. It's not a computer at all but it

feels a little bit like a computer. It looks a little bit

like a tablet doesn't it? But Etch a Sketch. I really really

enjoyed playing with my Etch a Sketch. Probably one of my

favourite toys as a kid. Etch a Sketch. I should I should buy

another one. Just for old time sake. That's when you buy

something just for fun because it reminds you of your

childhood.