Little Routines: How to Start English at Home

After years of teaching small children, I can tell you the single biggest secret isn’t a magic game or a perfect song. It’s routine. Following a routine helps children relax and feel safe — and a relaxed child is a child who learns.

Here is the shape I use in every lesson. It works just as well at home, in ten minutes a day.

1. Open the same way, every time

Start with the same hello song or greeting each day — even just a cheerful “Hello, hello, how are you?” with a wave. The song is a signal: English time is starting. Young children hear it and switch on.

Tip: in the beginning, do your English minutes at the same time every day — after breakfast, before the bath. Sameness is what makes it feel safe.

2. One small thing in the middle

One new word, one colour, one animal — presented through play: a song, a movement game, a quick craft, a hunt around the room. One thing is enough. Ten joyful minutes beat forty restless ones, every single time.

3. Close the same way, every time

A goodbye song, a high five, a special wave — the closing ritual matters as much as the opening one. It tells your child: we finished, and it was fun.

What about weather and days of the week?

From around age four, children love “calendar time”: look out of the window together and say sunny, rainy, cloudy; sing the days of the week. Two minutes, every day. It becomes the backbone of their first English.

At home: don’t worry about your own accent or grammar. Your child isn’t grading you — they’re copying your joy. If English time feels like a game with someone they love, everything else follows.