Let's Learn English at the Park! (A New and Improved Lesson!)

So I feel like we should go somewhere to learn English today.

Where should we go?

I know.

Let's go to the park.

Here we go.

Okay, we're here.

Let's put the sunglasses on and let's get this English lesson started.

I should actually mention, though, that I did do this English lesson once before.

A number of years ago I went to a park and I made an English lesson,

but I thought it would be a good idea to just do it again.

Maybe add a few words, make it a little more interesting, and do it at a different park.

So here we are at my local park.

Let's get started.

So what's the first thing you would like to see?

Oh, a snack shop or what we sometimes call a snack bar.

Well, there's actually one right behind me.

If a park is big enough, it will sometimes have a snack shop or a snack bar.

So if you get hungry while you're at the park and you remember to bring some money,

you can go and buy an ice cream treat or maybe a hot dog or something.

So this is a snack shop or a snack bar.

So there are two main sports that are played at parks in Canada

at least in this part of Canada.

One would be the sport of baseball.

And behind me, you can see what we call a baseball diamond.

Actually, we shorten it a bit.

We often call it a ball diamond.

So this is where people would come to play baseball.

In the distance, you can see the backstop.

That's the fence at the back of the ball diamond.

And if you look closely, they don't have the bases out during the day,

But you can see in that middle area where they would put the bases.

So one of the sports that's often played is baseball, and it's played at a ball diamond.

I'll get to the other sport in a moment, but I just realized

that I'm standing on a picnic table.

It's probably not allowed, but often at a park,

you will see what is called a picnic table.

A picnic table is a great place to come with your friends or family.

You bring a little bit of food.

With this picnic table here, you could watch the baseball game while you have your food.

Very, very handy place to eat when you come to a park.

Something called the picnic table.

So the other common sport here in my part of Canada is, of course, soccer.

What some of you call football.

If you look behind me, you'll see that there is a soccer field.

We don't call it a pitch here.

We don't call it a football pitch.

We call it a soccer field.

And this is where people will come to play soccer.

The majority of people who play soccer in Canada are kids.

It's a very popular sport.

Parents enroll their kids in a soccer league and they come and play soccer.

This is a regulation size field.

But down there, I'm not sure if you can see in the distance

you have some smaller fields for the really little kids.

They're a little bit too small to play on a regulation size field.

So they play down there on the mini fields.

So lately I've been looking for fun places to walk.

I walk a lot for exercise.

So lately I've been coming to the track here at the park.

This is a 400 meter track

that goes around the soccer field.

That's a normal distance, I think, for a track to be.

I come here and I try to walk one lap, and then I try to run the second lap.

I'm more successful at the walking part, but it's really nice

to have a track to come and walk on or to run on.

It's kind of softer than running on pavement or concrete,

so it's really nice to come and use this track.

It's also used by our local high schools.

So when you are in high school, you can be on the track team

and if you're in the running events, you would come to this track to practice.

So another common thing you would find at a park, a track.

So what would you like to see next?

Oh, the people who take care of the park, they're called the maintenance crew. Hi.

And they come every day and do their best to make sure everything looks beautiful.

Thank you very much for the job you do.

Ah thank you!. No worries.

So it was very nice of the maintenance crew to say hi.

I really appreciated that.

I did want to show you a couple other things when it comes to park maintenance.

This is the truck that the maintenance crew uses to drive around.

I imagine they use it to pick up garbage and do other things.

And way over there is the maintenance building.

Now, you might think that this looks like a very large building for just one park,

but it's actually the maintenance building for all the parks in this town.

This is the biggest park, but there's several smaller parks as well.

So the maintenance crew has this building to work out of

and they drive around red trucks like this one.

Oh, and there's another one in the parking lot right now, driving,

probably heading out to do some repairs somewhere.

I'm not sure what's in the back, but it looks like a lot of woodchips.

So, anyways, maintenance crews help keep our parks awesome.

So this next thing I'm going to show you actually has two names.

We sometimes call these bleachers or we just simply refer to them as the stands.

When you come to watch a game, you can sit on the bleachers or you can sit in the stands.

I'm not sure why I use “on” for bleachers and “in” for stands.

Interesting.

I just learned something myself about the English language.

Anyways, if someone you knew was playing a game,

you could come here and sit in the stands, or you could sit on the bleachers.

So let's say you're at the park and you need to go to the bathroom.

What do you do?

Well, you have a couple of options.

You could use one of these porta potties.

A porta potty is kind of like this portable bathroom that they put at different locations.

I'm not going to open the door because these things always smell for some reason.

And if you wanted to and if they were open,

you could head over to the snack shop and hope that the bathrooms are open.

So let's check if the bathrooms are locked today.

So we can come to the bathroom door here.

And yes, they are locked.

Now, you might be wondering, why are the bathrooms locked?

Well, parks in Canada are used a lot in the evenings and on the weekends.

And it's the middle of a weekday right now.

There's really

not a lot of people here at the park, so they generally keep the bathrooms closed.

But they are open on Saturdays and Sundays and throughout the week in the evening,

when there's lots of people here playing soccer or other sports.

I should mention, though, in Canada, we also call these washrooms.

We sometimes call them restrooms, but bathroom is kind of the most common term.

If you're speaking English in Canada or in America.

So bathrooms, another thing you can find at the park.

So sometimes when you're at the park, you're looking for a nice, shady place to sit.

You could, of course,

sit under a tree if you wanted to, but sometimes you want something bigger.

This is a pavilion.

A pavilion is a large building at a park.

Sometimes you actually need to pay money to use the pavilion.

It provides lots of shade if you want to get out of the sun.

And because this one is being built, there's a truck inside right now.

But once it's done, you could rent this on a Saturday.

You could invite your whole family to come to the park, and you could all sit

on picnic tables in the pavilion in the shade, enjoying some time together.

So you might be wondering,

what is the difference between a pavilion like this one and a gazebo?

Well, a gazebo is smaller.

A gazebo is good for a small handful of people, or just one or two people.

A gazebo is a great place to stop if you're on a walk with one or two other people

just to get out of the sun and to sit and have small conversation.

So a pavilion is great if you want to meet with a bunch of people.

And the gazebo is smaller and good for just a small handful of people.

So one of the reasons why this park is so nice

and tidy is because there are garbage cans everywhere.

In Canada, we call these garbage cans.

I thought there would be recycle bins as well, but I don't see any.

All I see are garbage cans.

I'm happy that most people who use this park are very, very tidy.

They really are good at remembering to throw out their garbage when they have some.

So that's why the park is neat and tidy.

There's lots of garbage cans and people use them.

So I mentioned that a lot of our sports are played at night and you might be wondering

how do people see at night to play sports?

Well, this park has lights.

So one of the ball diamonds and one of the soccer fields have lights.

This is the little utility building where they can turn the lights on and off.

And what that does is it allows people to play sports at night.

So if you bring your dog to the park, you must keep your dog on a leash.

And if your dog goes poop, you must scoop up the poop.

I like it when people clean up after their dogs.

It makes for a much nicer park experience.

So no park would be complete without a playground.

You can see the swings behind me and other things for little kids to play on.

A park is a great place to come if you have little kids.

Kids love going to the park, playing on the swings, playing on all of the other things.

And I did mention earlier that I thought the truck had woodchips in it.

Often our playgrounds have woodchips.

In Canada, we have a lot of trees, so we use wood for a lot of things,

and one of those things is to make the playgrounds soft and fun to play on.

So once again, if you have little kids,

the park is a great place to come because there's usually a nice playground.

Sometimes you're a little bit tired and you want to sit down.

Or maybe you've come to the park in order

to read a book, or just sit and enjoy the great outdoors.

You would then use a park bench.

This park has lots of park benches.

This particular park bench, I think, is most often used by parents

as they watch their children play on the playground.

But park benches, what a nice invention, a beautiful place to sit when you're at the park.

Well, thank you so much for watching this English lesson at the park.

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