Months and Dates Vocabulary

Months and dates vocabulary memory games

Instructions for teachers

This game can be played with any set of 12 word and/ or picture flashcards – the first set of words below are just ones I last played this game with, revising vocabulary with a class of nine-year-olds. It is also possible to play the game with full sentences like “In January I visit my cousins”, so a set of cards to help make sentences of this kind are given underneath. If you make your own cards, make sure that the cards are blank on the rear and that the cards can’t be seen through (which is why the words below are in pale script).

Lay out twelve cards in a line (stuck to the board, on a long table or on the floor). It doesn’t matter what order the cards are in. Drill the names of the months in order as you point at each card in the line (getting the class saying “January” as you point at the first card, etc). Do the same pointing and drilling thing, but this time turn each card face down as you drill each one. The teacher and students then test each on their memory of which card is in each place by asking questions like “Which month is watermelons?”/ “When is watermelons?”, “What card is January?”, “What do you do in February?” and “When do you go ice skating?”

Continue playing the memory game until all twelve cards have been guessed correctly, then you can do the same thing with the cards being labelled “first”, “second”, “third”, etc (rather than with the names of months) to practice ordinal words in dates.

To add reading practice of months words and/ or ordinal numbers, you can play the same memory game with students picking out one of the month cards or ordinal number cards at random and then having to identify which card is in that position in the line, e.g. having to remember what the fourth card is if they pick the “April” card.

Before or after using the word cards to pick which month or ordinal number they have to remember the card of, you can mix up both the ordinal cards and months cards and get students to match them up as quickly as possible (because January is the first month, February is the second month, etc).

 

Flashcards set 1 – basic vocabulary

kite

doll

cats

toy car

crayons

table

ball

snakes

ducks

horses

spring rolls

watermelons

 

Flashcards set 2 – actions for each month 

visit family

go skiing

have exams

watch fireworks

play in a league

have a party

get presents

buy new clothes

spend a lot of money

hate the weather

like the weather

go hiking

 

Months cards 

January

February

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

November

December

 

Ordinal number cards 

first

second

third

fourth

fifth

sixth

seventh

eighth

ninth

tenth

eleventh

twelfth