Let's Learn English! Topic: Summertime Fun! 🌞⛱️⚾ (Lesson Only)

Well, hello, and welcome to this English lesson about summertime fun. I made this lesson because Jen and I are gonna go. I should speak proper English.

We are going to go and see a Blue Jays game later this week. So I thought that's something fun you can do in the summertime in this part of the world. So I looked and researched.

I looked for and researched the, all the different things you can do in the summer. I should say this, though. This lesson is very canadian slash american.

It's not a very. It's not a worldwide lesson. This is as much a cultural lesson as it is an English lesson, because I'm going to primarily be talking about fun things that people like me do in the summer, people who live in North America, people who live in Canada, like myself, and people who live in the United States.

So if you're in another part of the world, this will be some English fun English learning. But it might also be a little peek into what North Americans sometimes do in the summer for fun. So, anyways, welcome to this English lesson about summertime fun.

I think you'll enjoy it. Bask in the sun. So I wanted to use this phrase because you might not know the word basque.

When you bask in the sun, it means you just lay in the sun and you enjoy the warmth. It might mean that you're trying to get a suntan. If you like to tan, it might simply mean that you like the warmth of the sun.

I don't often bask in the sun, but a great example would be this. Sometimes our cats will bask in the sun. They'll go, and they'll find a sunny spot in the winter when our dog Oscar is in our house, sometimes there's sunlight on the floor of the area in the house where he is, and he will lay in that, that spot where there's sun, and he will bask in the sun.

So to bask in the sun simply means to enjoy the warmth of the sun. It doesn't necessarily mean you're trying to get a tan. It can mean that, but it can also simply mean laying in the sun and enjoying the warmth of the sun.

You might go to the beach. This is something that I do in the summer. You might go to the ocean, or you might go to a lake, and it might have a beach.

A beach is a sandy area beside a large body of water. And by the way, if this phrase is familiar to you, um, don't stop watching, because there will be more advanced phrases as we go along. If you were like, I know that one go to the beach.

When you go to the beach, you might bring a beach towel. Uh, you will definitely wear your bathing suit so you can go for a swim. Um, maybe you're someone who likes to surf and you might go out in the water, but it's very common in this part of the world to go to a beach to bask in the sun and maybe to go for a swim.

Or you might build a sandcastle, or you might play some beach volleyball. Very popular here in Canada. Uh, people often play volleyball on the beach.

It's very hard to jump when you're in sand. I've played beach volleyball before. It can be very, very challenging.

You might go for a swim when you're at the beach, you might go for a swim in your pool. You might go for a swim at a friend's house. Jen and I sometimes visit the relatives who have a pool.

We have relatives that have a pool, so we might go there for a swim, but we sometimes just say, go for a dip. So this means the same thing. I could say, I'm going to go to my friend Joe's house for a swim, or I'm going to go to Joe's house for a dip.

You might say a dip in the pool, but if I was at the beach, I might say, hey, I'm just going to go for a dip. Does anyone else want to go in with me? So again, go for a swim.

Go for a dip. They mean the same things. You might go to a splash pad.

So when our kids were a lot younger, instead of going to a pool, we would go to a splash pad. When kids are two or three or even four years old, sometimes they don't know how to swim yet. And sometimes it's fun to simply go to a splash pad.

A splash pad has fountains. It has these things that dump water. If you see the yellow thing, that's a bucket that slowly fills with water, and then when it's full, it dumps.

So if you have little kids or if you have nephews and nieces and you go to a pool, there will often be a splash pad beside the pool. And you can go there to cool off. Summer is usually hot here, so we go to cool off.

You might go boating. So you might have a boat, or you might rent a boat, or you might have a friend with a boat. So you might go boating.

You might go out on the water. You might go water skiing behind the boat, or you might do some fishing. But simply going in a boat and going on a lake with the boat, we would simply say, go boating.

What are you doing this afternoon? I'm going to go boating. My friend has a small boat, and we're going to put it in the river, and we're going to go boating.

You might wear some shades or you might wear some sunglasses. I don't have a pair here right now. I think both of my pairs are in.

I think I have one pair in each van. I often wear sunglasses when I'm driving, and so that's why I usually keep them in the van. And we do call them shades sometimes.

Like, where are my shades? Have you seen my shades? I can't find my shades right now.

Shades, it's simply another word for sunglasses. So you might wear sunglasses. You might wear shades because the sun is really bright.

That's why you might go to an outdoor concert. So in Canada, you can only go to outdoor concerts in the summer, maybe late spring, early fall as well. But there's usually, it's pretty rare for there to be outdoor concerts in the winter because it's quite cold.

Sometimes on New Year's Eve, you can go to an outdoor concert, but it's cold, like, so summer is a time where you can go to an outdoor concert. Jen and I actually went to an outdoor concert on Canada day. So we saw what's called a cover band or a tribute band.

They were called the practically hip, and they do all of the songs from the real band, the tragically hip. So you might go to an outdoor concert. There's a town near me where once a month, there's a free outdoor concert.

And there's another town near me where every Thursday there's a free outdoor concert. Very nice. Very nice.

To go to an outdoor concert and listen to some music, you might sit in a lawn chair. So when you go to the beach, when you go to an outdoor concert, when you go to the park, when you do a lot of these things, you might bring a lawn chair. So a lawn chair is a folding chair that you can unfold or set up and then you can sit in it.

We also have lawn chairs in our van, just like I have sunglasses in the van. There's usually one or two lawn chairs in our vans in the summer because sometimes you'll visit someone, and we normally sit outside when we visit in the summer in Canada. So you, um, usually you bring a lawn chair with so that you can sit outside and enjoy each other's company.

So you might sit in a lawn chair. You might have a barbecue. So when I went to visit Brent, we went to his brother and sister in law's house, and his brother had a barbecue on July 4.

He had a barbecue. We sat and we ate some yummy food. We had hot dogs, we had burgers.

It was a very traditional american barbecue. So a barbecue is an outdoor cooking appliance. You can see the man in the far left where the smoke is coming up.

That is called a barbecue. But you can also say you're going to have a barbecue, which means you're inviting people over to eat some food with you in the summer. So Jen and I sometimes will have, oh, we'll say to my, um, my sisters or my brother, hey, come on over.

Uh, tomorrow we're going to have a barbecue. Um, we'll cook some food for you. So you might have a barbecue and you might, um, stand around and talk.

That's what you do a lot at a barbecue. You might go to a cottage, or you might go camping, or you might go glamping. So let me explain these three.

A cottage is a building in my part of the world. People go north. Most cottages are up north.

There are a lot of lakes in northern Ontario, the province where I live. So people will often go and rent a cottage, and then they'll go to the cottage for the weekend or for a week. So a cottage is just a small building, usually on a lake or river, but sometimes just within walking distance.

Um, so you might go to a cottage and just enjoy your time kind of out in the wilderness a little bit. You might go camping. This is similar, but you usually stay in a tent or you stay in what's called an rv, which is like a house on wheels, or we sometimes call it a motorhome.

But camping is similar. You'll go somewhere really nice and peaceful outside of the city in order to just be out in nature. So you'll sleep in a tent or in an rv and enjoy your time away.

Very common. No one, I shouldn't say no one. Very few people camp in the winter in Canada.

Some people do glamping. So glamping is a slightly more luxurious form of camping. You can see here that this tent looks really nice.

There's couches, there's a rug. It looks like they're on, like, a wood surface instead of just on the ground. So glamping is a relatively new word.

It just came out in the last little while. And it simply means, I think it's a combination of camping and glamorous. Yes, I just looked that up.

So you have the word glamorous, right, which means, like, rich and wealthy and luxurious and nice. And then you have camping, and then they put the two words together and they call it glamping. There's actually a place just down the road from us where you can go glamping.

They have yurts that you can rent. It's supposed to be very, very nice. You might see a ball game.

You might go to a ball game. You might see a baseball game. You might go to a baseball game in English.

In my part of the world, if you say ball game, you're simply talking about baseball. American baseball, kind of north american, because we do have the Toronto Blue Jays, which is a canadian team, and then every other team is american. But if you want to see a ballgame, summer is, of course, the time to see a ballgame.

You can go in the spring and you can go in the fall, but summer is just a great time to go and see a ballgame. Jen and I, as I mentioned, I'm wearing the hat because Jen and I are planning to see a ballgame later this week. We are super excited to go.

The tickets were super cheap. They were only $20. So that's great because last time I went, they were quite a bit more pricey than that.

But baseball, um, someone comes up to the plate, the pitcher throws the ball, the batter hits the ball, they run the bases, they try to get the batter out. I could probably do a whole lesson about baseball. Um, you know what?

I don't know if Brent's a baseball fan, but we should do one together on baseball. That would be a fun lesson. So if Brent's still here, let me know if you're up for that.

Anyways, you could see a ballgame. You could go and see a baseball game. You might do some gardening.

People often like to grow plants. Sometimes in your house you have house plants, but sometimes outside you have a small garden. So obviously in the winter, if you live somewhere where there's winter, you cannot do any gardening in the winter.

But you might want to do some gardening in the summer. Maybe you're going to grow flowers, maybe you're going to grow vegetables. Either way, you would be doing some gardening.

A good, healthy, fun activity. You might go canoeing. Now we use the word canoe when we talk about this type of boat.

This is a canoe. A lot of Canada was explored by canoe many, many years ago. A canoe is something that you sit in, you can paddle your canoe and you can use it to go for little boating trips on rivers or lakes.

More common on rivers. Lakes are a little bit big for a canoe, but you might go canoeing, you might go for a hike. A hike is simply a walk, but you're doing it out in nature.

So these people are walking on a nature trail or a hiking trail or a nature path. I would most likely call it a hiking trail. It's a place where people have walked and have walked for enjoyment.

Usually when you go on a hike, you see lots of interesting things. When I go on a hike, I like to hike where there's lots of trees so that I'm in the shade. But certainly a hike is a fun thing to do.

In the summertime. You can hike in the winter, but it's usually a little more enjoyable to go for a hike. In the summer, you might go to a festival.

So in this part of Ontario, Canada, we have a lot of different festivals. You might go to a music festival where there are outdoor concerts. You might go to a food festival where they serve a certain kind of food.

You might go to. I live close to vineyards. If you watch some of my videos from a year ago, I made a few videos in a vineyard where they grow grapes.

So we actually have a grape and wine festival later this year. In a town, in a city close to me, there will be a peach festival because they grow peaches close to me as well. So you might go to a festival.

At a festival, you might listen to some music, have some food. You might just sit with friends and have a good conversation. But festivals are certainly fun to go to when it's warm outside.

In the summertime, you might hang some patio lights. So this is, I know this is a pretty specific one, but these strings of lights are called patio lights. A patio is an outdoor area attached to your house or apartment where you can sit.

Some people call it a veranda. Patio. A porch is on the front of a house, but behind our house we have a patio.

It's a brick area and we don't have patio lights up there right now, but sometimes we put up patio lights so that you can see when you go outside at night. So you might hang some patio lights in the summer. Okay, so I have to warn you, I know some of you are not people who drink alcoholic beverages, but this is beer.

And sometimes in Canada, and I think in the United States, they will say, I'm going to have a cold one. Why don't you come over and have a cold one? Hey, are you thirsty?

Do you want a cold one? If someone uses the term cold one, they are talking about beer, okay? They're not talking about soda or pop or coke.

They're not talking about other things, like a bottle of water. If someone says to you, hey, you want to come over and have a cold one after work today, they are talking about beer. A very, very common way to talk about beer is to use the term a cold one.

So in the summer, you might have a cold one. I do not drink a lot of beer, but I do have some. I don't drink any in the winter, and in the summer I have one a month, maybe, maybe two.

I'm not someone. I've never been someone who drinks a lot. I just never has never, never really been that interested in that.

You might turn on the AC. So, AC stands for air conditioning. You can see they have an air conditioner up on the wall there, and he's pointing the remote control and turning on the air conditioner.

He has decided to turn on the AC. Um, when I visited Brent a couple weeks ago, I went to his house, and then while I was there, it was quite warm, and Brent turned on the AC. You would never turn on the AC in the winter.

That just doesn't make any sense. But certainly in the summer, many people will turn on the AC. They will turn on the air conditioning so that they can stay nice and cool in their house.

So even if it's 30 degrees outside, they can stay in their house, where it's 24 or 25 degrees celsius and stay nice and cool. You might have a picnic. So you might go to the beach and have a picnic.

You might go to the park and have a picnic. A picnic is when you pack some food, sometimes in a picnic basket, but more commonly now in a cooler, just because it's just more practical to keep the food cold. And you might bring a picnic blanket, and you might go and sit somewhere and eat outside and have something to drink outside.

So you might have a picnic in the summer, because it's just really pleasant. If I go and have a picnic, though, I usually don't sit in the sun. I usually try to sit under a tree in the shade.

But certainly in the summertime, you might have a picnic. You might pack some food in the morning in a cooler with ice packs to keep things cold. And then you might go somewhere nice, and you might have a picnic.

You might have a water fight or a water gunfight or a water balloon fight. This is something that children, children usually do, but sometimes adults do as well. It's warm, it's hot.

Water cools you off. So sometimes we have water guns and we shoot water at people. Sometimes we feel like, you know what a balloon is?

You can blow up a balloon, but you can also fill a balloon with water. And then when you throw it at someone and it hits them, it bursts and then they get water all over them. So pretty common thing to do.

Um, when I was a kid, on my birthday, we would have water gun fights. It was a lot of fun. Definitely, um, something fun to do in the summer when it is hot.

Have a water, water fight of some kind of go for a bike ride. I don't do this a lot, but it's a nice time of year to go for a bike ride. I'm more likely to go for a walk or go for a hike.

But maybe you like cycling and maybe you have a really nice bicycle. You might go for a bike ride. You might go to a park.

This is something I do enjoy doing in the summer. Parks are just beautiful, natural spaces that you can visit. Sometimes you can go to a park and have a picnic.

You can go to a park and just sit on a park bench and enjoy having a conversation with someone. You might go to a park and go for a hike. You might go to a park.

Let me see what else. You might play Frisbee or play some football in the park. You might go to a park and have a water fight.

But yes, going to a park, always an enjoyable thing to do in the summer. Just a nice, calming place. A place where you can be in nature for a little bit.

Run through a sprinkler. So if you hook a garden hose up to a tap and then you put a sprinkler on the other end. A sprinkler is something that you use to water the lawn.

Sometimes they go. Sometimes they just go back and forth. We have several kinds, but we would often, when our kids were little, set up a sprinkler and they would run through the sprinkler.

Another thing we would do is we would put the sprinkler so it shot water onto the trampoline. So they would jump on the trampoline and then water would hit them as well. But quite common when it's hot out for parents to hook up a sprinkler, water sprinkler.

And then kids will run through it to enjoy the water and to cool off a bit. You might set up a kiddie pool. So I wasn't sure if you knew this term.

A kiddie pool is a small pool. You can see these parents have set up a kiddie pool. A kiddie pool only has about this much water in it.

It's very very shallow, which makes it safer. But still, you always need to watch kids when they are playing in water. It's very important that you watch kids.

But you might set up a kiddie pool and your kids might go for a swim if you are a parent. We had a few kiddie pools in our life. We do not have a kiddie pool now because our kids are too big.

But you might set up a kiddie pool for your kids. You might go to a garage sale. So a yard sale or garage sale is something that usually happens on Saturday mornings.

You drive around and people sell used things, used clothing, used electronics, used furniture. They look in their house and decide there are things they don't need, and so they have a garage sale or yard sale to sell them. Sorry, I should have put the word yard, the term yard sale there as well.

They're interchangeable. Even if the sale is in the person's garage, it can still be called a yard sale. You might eat ice cream.

That's what I did last night, and I probably shouldn't have. We got home from market and I had a big bowl of ice cream. That might have been a mistake.

I probably ate a little too much yesterday, so I got up early and went for a walk right away this morning. You might go fishing. This is similar to, or this is in addition to what I said about to go boating.

So you might go fishing off a dock, or you might go boating and you might do some fishing as well. In fact, you might hang a little sign up that says gone fishing so that when people come to your house, they know where you went. People don't do that.

That's just something you see in old tv shows and old movies. So let's see here. So I don't know how common this is around the world, but it is very common in North America to eat watermelon in the summer.

This is a watermelon. They're huge and they're heavy and they're mostly water, but they're also really yummy. They taste really good.

We eat watermelon in the summer. There's watermelon in our fridge right now. This is a very common thing, I think, because in the summer you're so hot and you're very thirsty.

Eating something that's sweet but also very juicy and has lots of water in it is just a very yummy, tasty thing to do. So you might eat watermelon and you might just enjoy the taste and the refreshment that you get from eating it. You might go on a road trip.

So this is interesting because I think this is very common in North America, in Canada and the United States, because we do not have a lot of high speed rail. We don't have a lot of, like, trains that go from city to city. You can take a train, but it's not as common as maybe in Europe or in some countries in Southeast Asia or in Asia.

In Canada and the United States. You often just drive. I went to see Brent.

It was an eleven hour drive. I would call that a road trip. A road trip is when you get in a car or van and you drive like a day or two days or three days or more to go and visit someone or to see something.

Like if I wanted to see the Grand Canyon, Jen and I could go on a road trip and drive for several days to go and see the Grand Canyon. So again, a very, I think a very north american thing. But that's the term we use.

Like if someone said, what'd you do last summer, Bob? I could say, oh, I went on a road trip to Maine to visit my friend Brent. It was a lot of fun.

Took about 11 hours to get there. You might have a campfire. This is something Jen and I do in the summer.

We've only had a couple so far this year, but we will have campfires for my birthday. I might have a campfire. Or maybe I did have a campfire.

Who knows? But anyways, it's a time where you sit outside, usually at night around a campfire. You might roast marshmallows.

I think these people are roasting marshmallows. Marshmallows are like soft, yummy, sweet things. Um, but you might sit around a campfire, you might have a cold one.

You might roast marshmallows. You might sit in a lawn chair. Actually, you'll do all those things.

But yes, you might have a campfire in the summer and just enjoy some time outside. You might go to an outdoor market. Jen and I like it when people do this in the summer because we sell flowers at an outdoor market.

So you might go to an outdoor market to buy some things. In my part of the world, there are a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables in the summer. Watermelon, peaches, later in the summer and fall, apples, plums, right now, asparagus, strawberries.

I'm trying to think what I all saw at market yesterday. Blueberries, raspberries. There are many things to buy, and the best place to buy them is at an outdoor market.

So you will often in the summer go to an outdoor market, maybe even once a week to buy things that you want. You might put the top down. I don't do this because I don't have a convertible, but you might put the top down if you have a convertible.

You do not want to do this. In the winter, you would freeze. Excuse the term.

You would freeze your butt off. I'm pointing down to my. My butt.

You would freeze your butt off. But in the summer, you might put the top down. On a nice day, I think you just push a button.

I don't know. I've never had a convertible. But you might push a button, and then the top of the car goes down, and then you can drive around, like this bottom corner version of the cardinal with the top down.

And that's the term we use, like, oh, you have a convertible. Um, if we go for a drive, can you put the top down? I would love to feel the wind through my hair as we drive around.

So you might put the top down. You might go to a drive in so you can go and see movies outside at night. At a drive in theater.

We did this when the kids were little. We haven't done this a lot recently. Um, but you wait till it's dark, and then they show a movie and you sit in your car.

Or you might sit in a lawn chair. And then usually you turn your radio to a certain frequency and you hear the sound from the movie. Um, but, yeah, again, I haven't been to a drive in for a while, but a drive in theater would be a fun thing to do in the summer.

Um, again, you wouldn't. Well, you can't go in the winter, but you wouldn't want to because it would be too cold. But yes, you might go to a drive in movie.

You might sit in your vehicle and watch the movie, or you might sit in a lawn chair and enjoy the latest movie.