Let's Learn English! Topic: Spare Time Activities! 👩‍🏫🗳️🎉 (Lesson Only)

Well, hello and welcome to this

English lesson about spare time activities.

Spare time activities are the things we

do when we have extra time.

The things we do when we're not working or

sleeping or doing chores or running errands or eating.

Um, I think I said sleeping already.

The time when you can just do

something that you want to do.

So I'll give you a lot of examples.

Um, by the way, I'm doing this lesson because Jen

and I have more spare time in the winter.

So I was thinking of the things we

might do in January and February, and I

put together an English lesson for you.

So, once again, welcome to this English lesson about activities

and things you can do in your spare time.

Volunteer.

If you have spare time, you can volunteer.

I know people like my mom who

are retired, they sometimes decide to volunteer.

You volunteer, it means you work,

but you don't get paid.

And you usually work on something that

benefits your town or other people or

an organization in your community.

These people, it looks like they've decided

to volunteer to clean up this area.

It looks like people have thrown their

garbage and trash on the ground.

And so these people have decided their spare time

to volunteer to help clean up this area.

So one of the things you can do if

you have spare time is you can volunteer.

You can give of your time.

That's another way we say it in English.

And there are many places where you can volunteer.

You can volunteer at a thrift store.

You can volunteer to help clean things up.

You can volunteer to help organize a

bake sale to raise money for something.

That are many things you can do to help your

town or an organization or people in your town.

You could run for office.

This is not one that I'm going to do this winter.

I have no plans to run for office.

But sometimes people who have spare time, they

think, oh, maybe I should run for office.

Maybe I will be a counselor in my local town.

Maybe I'll run for mayor.

So this is the phrase we use, run for office.

I'm not sure how your country works, but

here you can be mayor, you can be

city councillor, you can be a regional counselor.

There's all different levels of government.

And if you want to, you can decide

to run for office and you can hopefully

get enough votes so people put you in.

By the way, it does say, vote Bob for mayor.

I'm not planning to run for mayor.

You could join a club.

So you might have thought this lesson was going

to be about all of the different hobbies and

things you can do in your spare Time.

It's a little more general than that.

So you can definitely join a club.

There are many types of clubs in the world.

You could join an English learning

club, if you could find one.

You could join a book club like these people.

You might be able to join. Uh, let me see.

I'm trying to think.

I've recently started doing archery.

So that's like with a bow and arrow.

I could maybe this winter join an archery

club and then I would be with other

people who like the same thing as me.

But if you have lots of spare

time, you could join a club.

You could take up a hobby.

You could decide to go and buy a

kite and learn to fly a kite.

There are many hobbies in the world.

You could learn how to play new games. You could.

Let me see what you could learn to do a little bit of.

Maybe you want to learn how to do crafting.

Like you want to be able to

make things out of paper and glue.

Um, there are many things.

You could start collecting stamps.

That would be a hobby.

But once again, if you have spare time, if

you have a lot of free time, um, I'm

not sure who has this much time, um, cause

I certainly don't have a lot of spare time.

But you could take up a hobby.

And that's the phrase we use.

You take up a hobby.

You could join a gym.

This is very common in January

in Canada and in North America.

And I'm sure in most parts of the world, many people

on New Year's Eve will decide to make a New Year's

resolution to work out and to get in shape.

And in order to do that, they might join a gym. We have.

Excuse me, we have a local gym in our

town and I'm sure memberships go up in the

month of January, and then probably people slowly stop

going to the gym in March or April.

But if you have spare time, you might join a

gym in order to build some muscle, maybe to run

and improve your cardiovascular health, your heart health.

Um, and you might.

Maybe you'll stick it out.

Maybe you'll go for a whole year.

You might take a night class.

Now, some of you might actually be in this situation.

Maybe you work all day, maybe you're in

school all day, but you still take a

night class, a class that happens at night.

Around here, night classes usually start around 7

or 7:30pm Maybe as late as 8pm and

they're about an hour to three hours long.

You might be taking an English night class,

but there are all types of night classes.

I know People used to take computer night

classes 10 or 15 years ago, when computers

were still new for older people.

So you might, at that time, you would take a

night class in order to learn more about it.

Here in my part of Canada, there are

often there's a mailing that comes from the

local college, a list of adult night classes

that you can take where you can improve.

Maybe you want to learn Italian, maybe

you want to improve your English.

Maybe you want to learn a new skill.

You can take a night class in order to do that.

Maybe you just need to catch up on things.

Maybe you've been really busy for a period of

time and you're behind on laundry, you're behind on

paying the bills, you're behind on getting the house

ready for winter if you're in Canada, and you

just need to catch up on things.

This happens to Jen and I sometimes

in the fall, from September until the

end of October, we're both really busy.

Jen is really busy on the farm,

and I'm really busy at school.

So in November, we start to catch up on things.

Maybe we're behind on the laundry.

Um, and there's other little things.

I'm sure that you have a similar situation

sometimes where you're just a little bit behind.

You might deep clean something.

So we keep our house relatively clean.

We vacuum, we do the dishes, we do laundry.

We keep the rooms in our house as tidy as possible.

But sometimes we just want to do a deep clean.

This means you really clean the room.

Like you move all the furniture when you

vacuum, you wash the windows, you dust all

of the areas where maybe you didn't dust

before, like on top of the picture frames.

You might, when you do a

deep clean, you might dust there.

But you can see this lady is ready to do a deep clean.

She has a garbage bag.

She is just cleaning things up.

She's wearing her cleaning gloves and an apron.

She's ready to do a deep clean.

So again, this is a little more

than just your regular weekly cleaning.

This is where you spend a couple hours in

one room, making it as clean as possible.

You might decide to reconnect.

You know, as you get older, it gets

a little bit harder to talk with your

friends, especially friends from a long time ago.

So sometimes when you have some spare

time, you decide to reconnect with friends.

You might give them a phone call, you might

send them an email, you might get together.

Okay, did you hear all those?

You could give them a phone call, you could send

them an email, you could get together in person.

Uh, and just to enjoy each other's company.

So you might reconnect people who you

haven't talked to for a while.

Um, this is something generally older people do.

But I do know that if you.

You're in your mid-20s or, you know,

when you're in school, eventually school ends

and people go their separate ways.

That's how we say it in English.

People go their separate ways.

And sometimes it's nice to reconnect with people

and you might just hang out with friends.

I know for someone my age, when I was

younger and when I wasn't married and didn't have

kids, I saw my friends a lot.

Nowadays, it's a little more challenging.

I have a job.

I have to provide for my family.

I'm quite busy.

It's hard for me to find time

to hang out with my friends.

In fact, we used to go see a movie once or

twice a year, and we haven't even done that lately.

So this is maybe something I should do this winter.

I should maybe go see a movie with

my friends because there's a couple of them.

There's one friend I see quite often.

There's a couple I haven't seen for a while.

So that would be fun.

Learn a skill.

So this is similar to take up

a hobby, but hobbies can be relaxing.

Hobbies can be where you learn a skill,

but the actual learn a skill or learn

a new skill means you're learning something useful.

This person is maybe learning how to do woodworking.

Maybe they're making a shelf or a

chair or something out of wood.

You could learn how to.

You could do pottery.

You could learn how to make things out of clay on

the thing that spins when you make stuff out of clay.

Spindle.

Not sure what it's called. And you might.

And then fire it in an oven.

So you could learn. Fix things.

You could learn to make things.

You could learn a skill,

something that's helpful in life.

Uh, learning English would fall

under this category as well.

We consider speaking English as a second

language as a good skill to have.

Um, so you might decide you're going to learn a skill.

And just so you know, there

are some hobbies that aren't skills.

Like flying a kite isn't really considered a skill.

Reading a book for pleasure, like for enjoyment, or being

watching movies as a hobby isn't really a skill.

But sometimes you're actually learning how to use tools

or how to make something or fix something.

You could join a league.

So this is a little different as

well than taking up a Hobby.

So I could start bowling.

This is the game of bowling as a hobby.

Maybe I go with friends once a month and I go bowling.

But if I join a league, it

means I'm probably going once a week.

It means I'm competing against other people

and I'm trying to win the season.

There's probably a season.

So you could join a tennis league,

you could join a football league.

You could join a bowling league.

Generally, this means you're.

Jen played in a volleyball league a few years ago.

Generally, this means you're playing some kind of

sport or some kind of competitive activity.

Like you can join a darts league

where you throw darts as well.

Um, but yeah, I have not been in

a league for a very long time.

I was in a soccer league, like an

amateur soccer league, many, many years ago.

Like, 25 years ago, when I could still run fast.

Um, but you might decide, hey, really like

bowling, or I really like throwing darts.

I'm going to join a league, and every Tuesday night

I'm going to go and compete against other people.

You might decide to renovate.

So this is something Jen and I have done in the past.

We're not planning to do it this winter.

We've spent most of our renovation budget on

new windows for parts of our house.

But you might decide that one room in

your house, you want to change things.

Maybe the walls are getting old and have holes in them.

Maybe it just needs a coat of paint.

Maybe you need to replace the windows and

the wood that goes around the windows.

Maybe you just want it to look a little nicer.

So you decide.

So you decide to renovate.

Um, renovations tend to cost a bit of money.

They usually cost more money than what

you were expecting, but it usually makes

that room in your house much nicer.

Maybe you want to put new cupboards in your kitchen.

Maybe you want to put a new sink in your bathroom.

All of that would be considered small renovations.

So you are changing how your house looks.

You might just want to rearrange.

So this is much simpler and much cheaper.

But you might have a room in your house.

Let's say when you go to your living room, um, maybe

the couch and some tables and plants and maybe a TV

have all been in the same spot for many, many years.

You might decide to rearrange.

Jen and I do this quite often in the winter.

In January, we're like, hey, we're kind of

bored with how this room is arranged.

Let's move the couch to this side.

Let's put the plants closer to the window.

Not Have a TV in this room.

Let's make this room a room

for quiet reading or for conversation.

So you might decide to rearrange a

room so that it looks different.

Um, and then you might even do a little bit of.

Not sure I would call it a renovation,

but some touch ups, like a coat of

paint is probably a very, very minor renovation.

I'm not sure I would even call it that.

Um, although I think I did in the last slide.

But you might just decide rearrange a room.

And then we also have a phrase to spruce up.

You might decide to spruce up a room or

you might spruce up your kitchen table and chairs.

This might mean you paint them, maybe you sand

them, maybe you just clean them really well.

Maybe you have a wobbly chair that you fix.

You're just sprucing things up a bit

so that they are more usable.

Um, I'm trying to think of

something else I might spruce up.

Um, it's kind of a funny phrase, isn't it?

It means it's more than just cleaning.

Like if I was to sell a car, I

might spruce up the car before I sell it.

That means I'm going to clean it really well.

I'm going to maybe fix the window.

That doesn't work.

Um, I'm going to try and make the car as

new as possible or as new looking as possible.

You, you might just rest.

I know for some people, especially people

who have very, very physically demanding jobs,

like my son mows lawns.

He has a lawn mowing business.

It's a very physical job.

So he has to have muscles and he

walks a lot, 25, 30,000 steps a day.

Um, so usually when he has a

bit of spare time, he will rest.

So one thing is he doesn't mow lawns in the winter.

So he usually takes a couple weeks to just rest

because I think it's a very physically demanding job.

So that's a new phrase maybe for some of you.

I do not have a physically demanding job as a teacher.

I do not lift things very often.

I don't carry things, I don't push things.

Um, I like, I am not going to

become Arnold Schwarzenegger by, by teaching high school.

Maybe I carry my laptop to class.

But if you work in the construction industry, if you

have a job in a factory where you are always

lifting things, we say it's a physically demanding job.

So this is a relatively new one.

You might do some meal prep.

So this is something that I hadn't heard

about till about three or four years ago.

Meal prep is when you prepare meals in advance for

a time in your life when you might be busy.

So this person is making meals

probably for the next five days.

It's a little bit boring, but it's also very efficient.

And usually when you do meal prep, you're preparing meals

that you can freeze and then heat up later.

So I know one of my

colleagues at school makes breakfast burritos.

Um, he's very busy in the morning.

His wife and him both have jobs and they're on

their way out the door, so they made breakfast burritos.

So they got like a tortilla and it has egg

and sausage and cheese and other things in it.

And they make these all in advance for a

whole month and then they freeze them and then

they can grab one and microwave it every morning.

So you might do some meal prep.

Jen and I do this a little bit in

the sense that sometimes on the weekend when we're

really busy, we might prepare a lot of different

kinds of meat like hamburger and chicken and freeze

it to use in meals for the coming week.

But if you have spare time and you know you're

going to be busy, you might do some meal prep

in order to get ready for that busy time.

Self improvement.

So self improvement refers to any activity that

you do to make yourself a better person.

So self improvement might be working

out so that you're stronger.

Self improvement might be reading one book every month.

Self improvement might be reading a self help book

to help you with something you're not good at.

Self improvement might be thinking about something you don't

do well and learning how to do it better.

Let's say I wasn't very good at communicating.

Say I was a boss at a workplace.

I'm self improvement for me might be learning how

to manage my employees better by communicating better.

So anytime you make yourself a better

person, we call it self improvement.

It usually means you're going to read a book

to become better at something or take a class,

but you are going to improve yourself.

You can also reinvent yourself.

Now this is a little more extreme.

Let's say I decided to reinvent myself.

That might mean that I buy all new clothes, I stop

wearing blue button up shirts with short sleeves, I grow my

beard really long and I grow my hair out.

That would be me reinventing myself.

Maybe I sell my minivan and I buy a sports car.

So basically I'm becoming small

way a slightly different person.

Um, but some people reinvent themselves in a good way.

Let's say you didn't Go to college and

you decide you're going to reinvent yourself.

Maybe you have long hair, a beard, you can't.

You, whenever you have a job, you, you quit.

After a while you decide, I'm going to reinvent myself.

I'm going to become a mechanic.

I'm going to go to school for two years.

I'm going to shave my hair nice and short.

I'm going to shave my beard, I'm going

to cut my hair short and shave my

beard and I'm going to reinvent myself.

So again, definitely more

extreme than self improvement.

But if you reinvent yourself, you try, you change

drastically what you look like and what you do.

You might just.

This should say sort through your clothes.

But you can say sort your clothes.

There's a slightly different connotation when

you sort through your clothes.

Might mean that you're putting the clothes you want to keep

on one side and putting the clothes that you don't wear

anymore and want to get rid of in a box.

Usually once every two years I sort through my clothes.

I find the clothes that I don't wear anymore

and I usually donate them to a thrift store.

Um, but definitely this is something that I enjoy.

Enjoy this when I'm done doing it.

I don't enjoy doing it all the time, but

it results in more closet space and more room

in your drawer if you sort through your clothes.

Um, I need to do this this winter.

I have a few shirts that you've probably noticed.

I haven't worn any recently because

they're starting to get small holes.

The fabric is so thin.

Um, but yeah, you might travel.

This is one that you might have guessed.

It's hard to travel when you're busy.

You are a full time student if you have a full

time job and if you don't have a lot of spare

time, it can be hard to find time to travel.

So many people, when they have spare time, will

travel and see different parts of the world.

You might make plans.

So this is kind of a funny one.

It sounds very generic, but we often in English

say, are you making plans for the weekend?

Do you have plans for the weekend?

Oh, I'm going to make plans for Christmas

break because I have two weeks off.

Um, what are you going to do in your spare time?

Oh, we made plans to visit a lot of people.

So it simply refers to thinking about something you're going to

do in the future and putting it on a calendar.

Uh, Jen and I made plans for this coming weekend.

Uh, we're going to Toronto Um, and

we're not seeing the Taylor Swift concert.

That's not why we're going to Toronto.

I don't have tickets.

Uh, but we are going to Toronto.

So we made plans to do that in our spare time.

I would never do this, but you might try something new.

And again, this is similar to, you know, learning a

new skill, taking up a hobby, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, but you might just try something new.

When Brent, from American English with Brent, visited

me over a year and a half ago,

um, we tried something new for me. Ziplining. Brand new.

I'm pretty sure it was new for Brent.

Um, but sometimes when you have spare time, you're

like, oh, I've never tried hang gliding before.

I've never gone scuba diving before.

I should try something new.

And then you might host something.

So this is an interesting word.

You might go to a party.

You might go to someone's house to play games.

You might go to someone's house

because you're in a book club.

The person who is hosting is the person

who is inviting people to their house.

I have a party.

I would say to my colleagues, oh, I'm

going to host a party this weekend.

Do you want to come?

If I was in charge of a book club, I might

say, oh, I host a book club once a week at

my house, and people come and they talk about books.

This person, I'm going to guess, maybe this

is like a wine and cheese club.

And I think the girl in the middle is the host.

So maybe once a month, her friends come over, they

try some really nice wine or have some cheese.

So when you host something, you plan it,

and it usually happens at your house. Okay.

It's usually something that's happening where you

live at your house or apartment.

Uh, you might just get some fresh air.

This is one of my favorite things to do.

Um, just be outside.

Um, when you're in a house, in

an apartment, you're not breathing fresh air.

But when you're outside in a park or out

in nature, you can breathe some fresh air.

So when you get some fresh air,

it usually makes you a lot happier.

Uh, you might knock something off your to do list.

I'm sure all of you have a to do list.

It's a list of all of the chores and

errands that you need to do that day or

that week or that month that year.

And so when you have some spare time, it's nice to look

at the to do list and knock something off the list.

To do something from your to do list.

Last week, my to do list said, unhook the irrigation pump

and put it in the house so it doesn't freeze.

So I got that done.

Uh, also on my to do list was to have

the snow tires put on each of the vans.

So we had that done as well.

And then lastly, you might break a bad habit.

I'm not sure if any of you do

this bad habit, but sometimes when you're really

busy, it's hard to break a bad habit.

So there's a tiny little spider right here.

Um, sometimes if you are someone who.

For me, I eat badly when I'm really busy.

And so when summer comes and I have more spare

time, it's easy for me to break that bad habit.

A lot easier for me to eat healthy in the summer.

But this is how humans work, right?

When you are working full time, when you are

in school full time, it can be stressful.

And then you might have bad habits like

this one that are hard to break.

But sometimes when you have some spare time, you can

figure out a way to break that bad habit.