Strut, Shuffle, Tiptoe — Act Out the Verb

A movement game in which one plain action — walk, look, eat, talk — is swapped for its more exact cousins and the child acts out the difference with their whole body. If you can feel how a strut differs from a shuffle, you know both words.

  1. Start with plain walking. Walk across the room together. “That’s walking. But there are lots of special kinds of walking, and each one has its own word.”
  2. Introduce three words, one at a time, by doing them. *"*Tiptoe — on your toes, quiet as a mouse." *"*Stomp — heavy, loud, cross feet." *"*Strut — chest out, proud as a peacock." Say the word as you move; the child copies and says it too.
  3. Call-and-move. You call the words in random order; the child crosses the room in that style. Speed up. Then freeze and ask “Which one are you doing?” so they have to say the word.
  4. Add two more from the list: shuffle, march, creep, stride, trudge, prance, wobble, dash. Five words in one session is plenty.
  5. Guess mine. Swap roles — the child moves, you guess the word. Get it wrong on purpose sometimes so they correct you: “No! That was creeping*, not* stomping*!”*
  6. Finish with a “when would you” chat. “When would you tiptoe? Who trudges — someone happy or someone tired?” Linking the word to a reason is what makes it stick.

Variation: Other verb families — ways of looking (peek, stare, glance, squint), eating (nibble, munch, gobble, slurp), talking (whisper, mumble, shout, giggle), touching (pat, poke, stroke, tap). Story walk — retell a familiar tale and have the child move as each character would (“How did the giant come down the stairs?”). Verb statues — music stops and you call a verb; everyone freezes in the middle of doing it.

Requirements

  • Space: A clear strip of floor 3–5 meters long (hallway, living room, garden)
  • Surface: Non-slippery floor; bare feet or shoes rather than socks on smooth floors
  • Materials: None; optional music and a few picture cards or scribbled stick figures to draw from a hat
  • Participants: 1 adult + 1 child; lively with 2–4 children
  • Supervision: Adult participates as caller and fellow mover

Rationale & Objective

Vocabulary depth is partly a matter of fine distinctions: knowing that stroll, march and trudge are all walking but are not interchangeable. Common Core Kindergarten names this skill directly — “distinguish shades of meaning among verbs describing the same general action (e.g., walk, march, strut, prance) by acting out the meanings” (L.K.5d) — and Head Start’s ELOF includes understanding relationships among words, such as synonyms, in goal P-LC 7. Acting words out is more than a way of keeping children busy: Tellier (2008) found that French five-year-olds who reproduced gestures while learning English words remembered them better than children who learned them with pictures, and verbs in particular are hard to learn from a still picture because their meaning unfolds over time. Doing the action, hearing the word and saying it at the same moment ties the three together. Beck, McKeown & Kucan argue that precise verbs of this kind are exactly the vocabulary worth teaching early, because they turn up constantly in books but rarely in everyday chat — a child who knows them understands far more of what is read to them.

Progress Indicators

  • Early: copies your movement but performs every word in much the same way; cannot yet name the movement when frozen; needs you to move alongside
  • Developing: performs 2–3 words distinctly on hearing them; names the movement when asked with a choice (“is that tiptoeing or stomping?”)
  • Proficient: performs five or more words distinctly from the word alone; names your movements correctly; can say when someone would move that way (“you tiptoe when the baby is asleep”)
  • Advanced: uses the precise verbs in their own stories and pretend play; explains the difference between two close words (“marching is like soldiers, stomping is when you’re cross”); suggests new members of a verb family

Safety Notes

  • Clear the path of toys, rugs that slide and sharp-cornered furniture before anyone dashes or prances
  • Socks on wood or tile floors are a slipping hazard — go barefoot or wear shoes
  • With several children, have everyone travel in the same direction and keep “dash” for outdoors
  • Keep “stomp” gentle on hard floors and skip it for children with foot, ankle or knee pain; a child with motor difficulties can act the verbs with a toy figure or with fingers on a table instead
  • For the eating and touching verb families, use pretend food and soft toys rather than real mouthfuls or other children

Hints

  • Playfulness: attach an animal or character to each word — tiptoe like a burglar cat, strut like a rooster, trudge like a tired explorer in deep snow. Add sound effects
  • Sustain interest: take a new verb family each time (walking this week, looking next week, eating after that); keep the words in a hat and let the child draw the next one
  • Common mistake: introducing ten words at once. Three to five per session, each one moved, said and talked about, is what the child will still know next week
  • Limited space: act the words with two fingers “walking” across the table, or with a toy figure on the sofa arm; the looking and talking families need no space at all
  • Cross-domain: this is a gross-motor and balance workout in disguise; move to music of different tempos (rhythm); talk about how each walk feels inside — proud, tired, sneaky (emotional vocabulary)
  • Progression: copy the adult → move from the word alone → name the adult’s movement → explain when you would move that way → use the words when retelling a story

Sources

  • Common Core State Standards, Kindergarten Language — L.K.5d: “Distinguish shades of meaning among verbs describing the same general action (e.g., walk, march, strut, prance) by acting out the meanings”
  • Head Start ELOF — Goal P-LC 7: “Child shows understanding of word categories and relationships among words”
  • Tellier, M. (2008), “The effect of gestures on second language memorisation by young children,” Gesture, 8(2), 219–235
  • Beck, I.L., McKeown, M.G. & Kucan, L. (2013), Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction (2nd ed.), Guilford Press
  • UK EYFS Communication & Language — learning new vocabulary through role play and active experience