Rooms and Furniture in English: House Vocabulary for Kids

Practice on screen

Look at the picture or number and choose the right English word. Ten questions each round.

How to teach it

1. 1. Walk through your own home

   Take the child from room to room and name each one: "This is the kitchen." In each room, name two or three things. The real room gives a reason to say the word, and the child can touch the objects while repeating them.

2. 2. Build a doll house

   Use a shoe box with cut paper rooms, or a toy house. Ask the child to put furniture in the right place: "Put the bed in the bedroom." Names of rooms and furniture are practiced together, and the child can use real sentences.

3. 3. Where is it?

   Hide a small toy somewhere in a room and give clues in English: "It is in the kitchen. It is near the fridge." The child searches. Then swap, so the child hides the toy and describes where it is.

4. 4. Draw a plan of the house

   On a big sheet of paper, the child draws the rooms and labels each one. Next, add the furniture. Ask, "What is in the living room?" and let the child answer. A finished plan makes a good reference for later lessons.

5. 5. Sort the things by room

   Make cards with pictures or words: toothbrush, lamp, bed, stove, car. Lay out cards with the room names and let the child place each object where it belongs, saying a full sentence: "The toothbrush is in the bathroom."

6. 6. Guess the room

   Give clues about a room without naming it: "We sleep here. There is a bed." The child guesses: "The bedroom." Start with easy clues and, as the child improves, make them shorter and harder.

Common mistakes

• Saying "go to home"

  With home as a place you go, English uses no to: "I go home" and "She is at home." Wrong: "I go to home." With other places, to is needed: "I go to school." Learn go home as a fixed phrase.

• Confusing house and home

  A house is a building: "They have a big house." Home is the place where you live and feel you belong: "I am at home." Wrong: "I am at house." Right: "I am at home."

• Choosing the wrong small word: in, on, at

  Use in for rooms (in the kitchen), on for surfaces (on the sofa, on the wall, on the floor) and at for a point such as at the table or at the door. Wrong: "The picture is in the wall." Right: "The picture is on the wall."

• Using stairs as singular

  Stairs is a plural word, so we say "The stairs are steep" and "I walk up the stairs." Wrong: "The stair is steep." You can say a stair for one step, but children mostly need the plural.

• Using the wrong word for American or British English

  American English says closet, stove and bathtub. British English says wardrobe, cooker and bath. A bathroom is the room, and a bathtub is the thing you wash in. Choose one set of words and keep to it.