Halloween Checklist with Teacher Robin

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Hello, welcome to another class. I’m Robin and today we’re going to be talking about checklists. Yes, making checklists. So you may not know that October 30 is actually checklist day. There’s a date for everything. So today we’re going to talk about the benefits of making checklists in all aspects of your life. So also in learning English and then I’m going to share with you a special checklist for Halloween because Halloween is coming up as well on the 31st of October. So let’s start with a phrasal verb. When we make a checklist, so this is a list of things that we want to do or we want to accomplish. It could be grocery shopping, it could be tasks at work, it could be anything, really. So we make these lists and we check off as we go. So when you finish something, you check it off. So this is a phrasal verb “to check off” or to “check something off” your list. Okay, so what are the benefits of making checklists? So for organization, they’re great because you make this list, and you go through each item. And for me personally, and I think for a lot of people, this is kind of a psychological thing. You feel good as you check these items off the list. So even if your list is very long, you feel good as you go one by one and you accomplish, you do all of the things that you have planned. Okay, so how can we apply this to learning English? It’s a good idea to make a checklist of your goals. Now, this could be weekly, it could be daily, it could be monthly. One great way and something that we already have for you if you study on the app is the Daily Plan. And this is kind of like a checklist. So it’s a recommendation of a unit of the course, some microlessons and an ABA moment. So this is almost like a checklist as well that you can go through every day and learn something new in English. But if you have a specific goal, like “I want to pass an exam” or “I want to learn more phrasal verbs”, etc., then you may benefit from making this checklist. So I encourage you to do so. And you can write that in the comments later. What is your checklist to learn in English? Okay, so now let’s move on to my Halloween party checklist. Now, I know that this year is a little bit different because of the pandemic, because of COVID. And we cannot celebrate Halloween as we normally do. But we can still celebrate and I’m going to show you some ways that are COVID-friendly. Okay. So when I say COVID-friendly, that means that they are acceptable during these times. So they’re acceptable for social distancing. They’re acceptable for, for meeting in small groups, etc. Okay, so this word that I just said this COVID-friendly, okay, this is an adjective, it’s a compound adjective because it’s made up of two or more words. And you’ll notice that there’s a hyphen between. So there are a lot of compound adjectives with the second word “friendly” and that means that it’s acceptable for the situation. So in this case, COVID-friendly, but there are other examples with friendly like “budget-friendly”, that means that it’s affordable or cheap, “kid-friendly”, that means that your children can go or can participate. “Vegetarian-friendly”, that means that if you are a vegetarian, you can eat the food that I’m going to talk about. Okay? So this compound adjective applies to many of the situations that I’m going to talk about. Okay, so that are friendly for what we are doing. Alright, so the first on my checklist, we need to plan a COVID-friendly party. Alright, so this is probably not going to involve having 30 people in your house. Okay, that’s not acceptable. That’s not COVID-friendly. So what you could do is have a small group. So this depends in every country, how many people are allowed. You could have a small group at your house or go to someone else’s house. Or you could do a virtual party. Okay, so that means you can connect on Zoom or Hangouts with as many people as you want. And it’s COVID-friendly. So you’re not putting yourself at risk, you’re not risking getting sick. Okay, so here is my recommendation. So if you’re going to have a party, you need party food, but the party food needs to be COVID-friendly, right? So what you need to do is prepare some appetizers or food that is an individual servings or individual portions. So the word “serving” or “portion” is the amount that you’re going to eat. Okay? So this would be things like little food on a toothpick or a bowl of something that’s individual, okay, where someone can just go, they take it, and they don’t have to touch anything else. So this is COVID-friendly food, okay, individual portions, individual servings, this is going to be the best thing to do if you’re going to have a Halloween party and you’re going to serve food or drinks. So individual portions. Okay, then we have to think about the costume. Now, sometimes people spend a lot of money or they go to a shop to buy a costume. This year, you might think, why if I’m going to have a virtual party? So I recommend checking out YouTube or Pinterest. There are some great budget-friendly, okay, so remember, that means cheap, costumes that you can make yourself at home that are still fun, and you can have a good time without spending a lot of money. Okay, so first on our checklist, we have the food. Second was the costume, a budget-friendly costume. Next, we have our decorations. So if you’re hosting a party, a Halloween party, you need to have decorations. Okay, so the most popular Halloween decoration, of course, is the jack o’ lantern. So you can get a pumpkin at the store. And you can either paint your pumpkin, or you can make a Jack-o-Lantern, which is where you carve, you cut out a design, you take all of the inside out of the pumpkin, and you cut a design like a face, a scary face. And then you put a candle inside and you put the top on. And then it becomes a Jack-o-lantern. So this is some of this is one of the most popular Halloween decorations. And then of course, there are other things that you can hang in your house. Orange and black are the popular colors, of course. So you can also have some budget-friendly decorations if you’re hosting a party. Okay, and then you need to think about your music or your playlist. So a “playlist” is a list of songs that you are going to listen to. So if you have Spotify or YouTube, you can find some good Halloween-themed songs that you can listen to during your party. Okay. All right. So those are the items on my checklist. Some other recommendations to get ready for Halloween or to get in the spirit, the feeling of Halloween. Depending on where you live, especially in the United States, Canada, the UK, you can visit a pumpkin patch. So I talked about decorating pumpkins. So when you buy your pumpkin, you can go to a place where they grow the pumpkins and you can choose the pumpkin that you want. And this is a COVID-friendly activity because you are outside you can social distance and you can choose the pumpkin that you want to decorate. Okay, and this year, trick-or-treating, so where you go door to door, collecting candy, this is something popular for children. It’s not recommended because of the pandemic. But I read a recommendation online that was really nice that you can do, especially if you have a car, you can drive through different neighborhoods and you can see the decorations and then you can give a piece of candy to your children when they see a pumpkin or when they see something specific. So it’s kind of like you can make it a game. So this is an alternative COVID-friendly kind of trick-or-treating if you still want to do it. Okay, and my final recommendation is to check out all of the Halloween content. We at ABA are preparing some really cool, really interesting Halloween content for you this month. So I have another video coming next week about a book,movie, and song related to Halloween. Jay has a video coming up about scary stories. And Marion is going to teach you how to paint your face, which is going to be really great. And she’s also going to talk about some Halloween musical recommendations. So in addition to that we have articles on social media, we have all kinds of stuff going on for Halloween. So I hope that you will check all of this out. Stay tuned throughout the month, check your app every day, check that Daily Plan to see what checklists that we have suggested for you. And now I want to know in the comments, do you make checklists? And what do you make them for? For example, I always make a checklist when I’m cooking, because I love to cook, but I need to remember everything that I have to buy all of the ingredients. So I always make checklists for cooking. What do you make checklists for? Do you find them helpful? Do you make checklists for learning English? So remember at the beginning of the class, I said, “Tell me in the comments. What is your checklist for learning English?” Alright, so I hope that you have enjoyed this video. You are ready to celebrate Halloween in a different way, but still fun. And I look forward to seeing you back here next week for more Halloween content. Take care. Bye!