Teaching English to 5–6 year olds
The year words become sounds, and answers become sentences
Something changes at five. A child can now hold a game with two phases — deal the cards first, then play them — and can wait through somebody else's turn without the whole thing collapsing. That single shift opens up half the activities that were impossible a year ago.
It also opens the door to letter sounds. Not reading yet, and not the alphabet song as a party trick: the sound a letter makes, matched to words the child already knows. That order matters. Sounds land on words, never the other way round.
The twelve topics below are arranged for a child who may be starting from zero at five, or who may be arriving with a year of listening behind them. Either way the order holds, because each topic is chosen to make the next one's sentences possible.
⏱️ What a five- or six-year-old can hold
- Five to ten minutes per activity — roughly double what worked at three, and worth spending on one good thing rather than two rushed ones.
- Two-phase games work now. Deal, then play. Sort, then race. This is the age that unlocks them.
- Online, still multiply by 0.7. A ten-minute activity becomes a seven-minute activity on a screen.
- Turn-taking is a teachable skill, not a given. Name the order out loud before you start and half the arguments never happen.
- They can now be wrong on purpose and find it funny — which makes correction games possible for the first time.
🎯 What success looks like by the end of the year
- Uses around 150 words, and reaches for them without being prompted with the first sound.
- Answers in a short sentence: "It's a cat", "I like apples", "I've got two".
- Hears the first sound in a word and can find another word that starts the same way.
- Asks at least one question in English — usually "What's this?" — because they wanted to know, not because you asked them to.
- Recognises a handful of written words by shape: their name, and maybe cat, dog, red.
🗺️ The topics, in teaching order
Twelve topics, and the reason each one sits where it does. Every topic opens a pack with a word wall, printables and games.
- 1
🌈 Colours12 words
Still first, but faster now — a week, not a month. Colours are the adjectives that make every later sentence longer than one word.
- 2
🔢 Numbers11 words
One to ten, then counting real things. "How many?" is the first question a five-year-old can both ask and answer.
- 3
🦊 Animals26 words
The set with the most built-in enthusiasm, used here to carry the first full sentence: "It's a…", then "I've got a…".
- 4
👨👩👧👦 Family16 words
Personal, so the sentences become true ones: "This is my sister." A true sentence is remembered better than a correct one.
- 5
🖐️ My body16 words
Movement plus description. "I've got two eyes" is grammar practice that never feels like grammar practice.
- 6
🎒 School16 words
Classroom things, taught right when the child is starting school anyway. Pencil, book, bag — the vocabulary of the room they are sitting in.
- 7
👕 Clothes12 words
Gets colours out of the abstract and onto a person: "a red shirt". Two known words combining into one new idea.
- 8
🍎 Food20 words
The home of "I like" and "I don't like" — the first opinion a child can hold in English, and they will hold it loudly.
- 9
🍓 Fruits16 words
A smaller, sharper set right after food, so the like/don't-like pattern gets a second run with new words instead of new grammar.
- 10
🏠 At home16 words
Rooms and furniture bring in where: "in the kitchen", "on the table". Prepositions arrive as places, never as a rule.
- 11
🏃 Actions16 words
Verbs, once there are enough nouns to act on. Now a whole game can run on instructions the child both gives and follows.
- 12
⛅ Weather & sky16 words
The perfect closing topic because it repeats itself daily. "What's the weather like today?" is a question with a new answer every morning.
🪜 What to teach, and what to leave alone
Listening ✓
Now with two-step instructions: "Take the red one and give it to me." Following both halves is real progress.
Speaking ✓
Short sentences, built from a frame you repeat all year: It's a…, I've got…, I like…
Letter sounds ✓
Starts here — the sound, not the letter's name, and always attached to words they already say.
Reading (whole words only) ✓
Recognising a printed word by its shape, next to its picture. Not decoding. That is next year's job.
Writing ✕
Tracing only, and only if their hand is ready. A five-year-old who hates the pencil will transfer that feeling to English.
🎲 The games that fit this age
Star Quest tier for this age: 🐣 Little ones (3–5), then 🧒 Middle years (6–8)
Garden of Pairs· 👕 Clothes
Deal, then play — the two-phase shape this age just unlocked. Six pairs is about right.
Seaside Bingo· 🔢 Numbers
Numbers plus listening plus a reason to stay quiet and wait. Bingo does three jobs at once at this age.
Star Quest· 🎒 School
Six kinds of card and a class pet that hatches. Set the tier to Little ones at five and move up to Middle years at six.
Painter's Attic
Now they can genuinely draw the card instead of acting it, and the guessing gives everyone else a reason to speak.
Name 3
Tap the cube, it lands on a topic, name three things. Take turns with the teacher — hearing a grown-up stall is half the fun.
📅 A weekly rhythm
| Lesson day · 25–30 min | Warm up, teach six to eight new words, one two-phase game, one speaking round, a soft ending. Five blocks, five to ten minutes each. |
|---|---|
| The day after · 10 min | Same words, different game. Changing the game keeps the repetition invisible, which is the whole trick. |
| Mid-week · 10 min | One letter sound from the alphabet pages, matched to words from this week's topic. Five minutes is plenty. |
| Weekend · 10 min | The practice quiz for the topic, alone if they want. At five, doing it without an adult watching is part of the point. |
🏡 Homework that gets done
Send one topic as homework and nothing else. A five-year-old with one clear job does it; a five-year-old with three jobs does none of them.
Build a lesson for this age
The lesson-plan generator, already set to this age band. Choose any topic and it returns a timed five-block lesson you can print.
The first ten lessons: ages 5–6
Twenty-five minutes each, ending in a sentence rather than a word
❓ Common questions
When should we start reading in English?
Start with sounds at five and whole-word recognition soon after; leave real decoding until 6–7, and until the child reads a little in their first language. Reading English before that means fighting two battles at once.
How many new words per lesson?
Six to eight, and expect to keep about half. That is not failure — the other half comes back next week and sticks the second time. Twelve new words in one lesson usually produces zero.
Should I correct mistakes at this age?
Not directly. Say the correct version back as if you were simply agreeing — child: "I have two eye"; you: "Yes! You've got two eyes." They hear the fix without hearing a correction.
My child learned words last year and forgot them. What now?
Re-teach them fast rather than carefully. Forgotten words come back in a fraction of the time they took the first time, so a single game usually recovers a whole topic — then move on rather than dwelling.