When in a foreigner country and working as an international volunteer, the language barrier can be an initial challenge, but creatively it is possible to overcome it.

Here we will share more some suggestions of fun games and activities to play with the children. Click here to check our previous post with more 10 suggestions of activities for international volunteers.

1- Rock-painting

Grab some rocks, paint and brushes and let the children have fun by mixing colors and drawing whatever they want. Depending on the age of the children it can be dangerous, specially if they still put things on their mouth.

2- Play Hide and Seek (Pic esconde)

It´s a tradition every kid love! It´s also an opportunity to teach them the numbers in English.

3- Beauty Day

Give the litle girls a beauty day by painting their nails or doing their hair. Create an authentic spa environment, put some music, grab a mirror, let them feel special.

4- Homemade snap cards

Use old magazines or supermarket newspapers to cut out pictures, glue them onto some hard-backed card and make snap cards. The images don’t need to be exactly the same, you can write the names both in English and Portuguese to help them learn new vocabulary. You will also learn by doing!. dog, man, lady, car, house etc. It’s a great activity for reception aged children who are learning to read.

5- Finger Paint

Get messy with finger paint — no explanation required!

6- Hokey Pokey

The hokey cokey is a participation dance with a distinctive accompanying tune and lyric structure. It is well known in English-speaking countries. If you don´t know it, use this video to help you.

7- Heads and Sholders

You just touch whatever part you’re saying. It goes ” head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes, head and shoulders knees and toes knees and toes, eyes and ears and mouth and nose, head and shoulders knees and toes knees and toes” ..  That one you can do sloooowww or really fast. And in any language.

8- Duck duck goose

Everyone sits in a circle and there is one person who walks around the circle and touches the others’ heads. As they touch they say “duck” until they pick one and they say “goose” and the goose has to try to catch the ducker by chasing him around the circle. To be safe the first “ducker” has to sit in the chaser’s spot. If he gets caught then he sits in the middle until someone else is caught. Check here to see kids playing it.

9- Paper Chains

Kids can really get into these: Take many strips (about 2 x 8 inches or 5 x 20 cm) of construction paper (white paper will do too) and staple the first one into a circle. Form the next circle and loop it through the first one. Keep on going until your chain has the desired length. This is a fun project when you use “seasonal” colors, like red, white and blue for the 4th of July celebration, or orange and black for Halloween.

10- Touch the object

the kids stay in a line in the middle or the playground. Show a paper with an object ( could be a shape or a color) to the kids and they have to race to find this object in the area around. The first who finds it, wins.