Well hello and welcome to this English lesson about random things.
The title is what is that thing?
What I did is I went through my day.
Actually I did this over a couple of days.
And whenever I saw something that I think or that I thought I had never taught before in an English lesson.
I wrote it down.
So it is very much random.
You can kind of track where I was in the day, as I wrote down each word or phrase that I'm planning to teach you today.
But definitely at one point I was looking at curtain rods obviously.
So this lesson is really just a collection of Quite common everyday things.
Everyday English vocabulary that you will see as you go through your day.
So welcome to this English lesson about random English words and the title is what is that thing?
Because that's the question you would ask if you didn't know what it was.
Crocs.
Sometimes people wonder where I come up with the ideas for my lessons.
In my past lesson this week I was wearing my Crocs.
Is that like two left?
Yeah those are both for left feet aren't they?
That's kind of a funny picture but anyways these are Crocs.
Crocs I wear are actually fake Crocs, but Crocs are a new, innovative type of footwear that showed up around 10 or 15 years ago.
They're very nice to have because they're easy to slip on and slip off.
There's a few verbs for you notice.
Crocs is capitalized because it is a brand name, but you can buy what we would call fake or knockoff crocs as well.
So crocs any shoe that looks like this, that you can easily slip on or slip off without having to tie laces, which is why I really like them.
If I need to go outside quick, maybe to just make a quick English lesson, sometimes I just slip on my Crocs to go outside and do it flap.
I was driving home the other day and the vehicle in front of me, a stone, flew off and hit my windshield, but it did not crack my windshield.
And I thought to myself that truck should have mud flaps.
So mud flaps it is this big black piece of rubber.
I think they're usually made of rubber.
And on the back of a vehicle and it stops mud and stones and other things from flying off the tire.
So this is an example of something I didn't see but I wish I had seen.
So if the vehicle in front of me had had mud flaps, the stone would not have flown off and hit my windshield.
Again windshield did not crack.
So I'm very happy.
Circuit breaker.
I have been playing around with electricity.
Maybe that's not an accurate way to say it.
You shouldn't play around with electricity.
I have been learning about solar power.
And part of kind of electrical circuit in order to make it safe involves using a circuit breaker.
A circuit breaker will trip.
So it will actually flip to the off position if there are any faults or problems with the electrical circuit.
So when you have a circuit breaker, you just a good thing to have to make sure your electric circuits are safe.
So that is a circuit breaker.
You most often find them in a breaker box or what we call a breaker panel.
This is what they usually look like in North America.
I know in different parts of the world they look slightly different.
They this one has a series of breakers.
This looks almost exactly like mine in the basement.
Um which is usually where they're found in North American homes.
But you can see there is one breaker for every electrical outlet and for almost every light in this person's house.
And again the circuit breaker trip.
That's the verb we use if there is a fault.
Now you might have fuses.
By the way this isn't all technical.
This isn't all about electricity.
I just have two more slides and then we'll get to more fun stuff like magnets.
But anyways, a fuse does the same job as a breaker.
That a fuse will blow, and then you have to replace the fuse.
So basically if there's a fault or problem with the circuit the fuse will blow.
It will stop the connection and the circuit will no longer be working because the fuse will.
Something went past its tolerances and it blew.
So this is a car fuse.
This is an old-fashioned fuse from a house, and then, way on the other side is a small fuse you might find in electronics.
And then, If you are in a part of the world that still uses fuses, you will either have a fuse panel or a fuse box.
We use panel and box interchangeably.
So you might have a breaker box or a fuse panel or fuse box, either one of those two. magnet.
So, magnets are one of the first things that I was fascinated with in life.
When I was a kid, my dad gave me a couple magnets.
You sometimes use magnets on the farm. there are magnets in DC motors and things like that.
So he gave me a couple of magnets and I was fascinated by how the magnets if you put them one way, we're attracted to each other, but if you put them the other way, they would repel each other.
They would push each other apart.
But a magnet is something that attracts metal.
So you can see, these paper clips are attracted to the magnet and so they will move to the magnet and stick to it.
And by the way, a magnet has a north and south pole.
So, as I was cleaning up the back room in our house the other day, I found some VHS tapes, or what we used to call videocassettes.
So a long time ago, before we just recorded everything digitally, we you would have a machine called a VHS player or a video cassette player.
And you would put these large black video cassettes in or what we also called a VHS tape.
And then you could record something from the TV, or you could record something on a camcorder and play it back in the VHS player.
You could rent a movie that was on a videocassette or VHS tape.
So definitely definitely something from the past.
We would call it a blast from the past. air vent.
So yes I walked by an air vent at school.
I think I have taught this word before.
But if you are in a building there are most likely going to be air vents in different places.
Part of keeping the air in a building fresh and good for you to breathe is it needs to circulate.
So so there are usually air vents that allow air to be moved within a building.
In my part of the world these air vents are usually part of the heating system and cooling system.
It's the same system.
And we I think the official term is forced air heating.
Um, where you heat up air and then you move it through the house or building, through different ducts, and the air comes out in an air vent.
So there you go.
An air vent looks like that.
It's a grate that's another word for it with kind of holes in it so air can flow through it nicely plunger.
So this is a funny story, because a plunger is kind of this thing you use when your toilet is plugged.
So when your toilet is plugged, it means you flush the toilet and whatever's in the toilet doesn't actually go away.
It stays in the toilet bowl.
So then you need to get a plunger because the toilet is plugged.
Somehow between the toilet bowl and the pipe underneath something is stuck in there.
Maybe a big wad of toilet paper or Hey, there's a good word wad of toilet paper or something else that I won't describe.
And then you will use a plunger.
A plunger forces air into the pipe and it will push the whatever is in there.
It will push it through the pipe so you can plunge the toilet if it is plugged.
Bullhorn or megaphone.
So right now at school the sport that is happening is called track and field.
Track and field is a sport where you have a large team and the sport happens outside, on a big, open field where there are jumping pits and there's a track.
There are places to throw the javelin.
One of the things that a coach needs.
I'm not a coach by the way.
One of the thing a coach one of the things a coach needs is a bullhorn or megaphone.
Both names mean the same thing.
This is basically a speaker that, and a microphone with a battery and an amplifier and you pull the button and you talk in the back and your voice comes out from the front louder.
So, you don't often see coaches using these in other sports.
But it is a very handy thing to have if you are coaching track and field.
You can say, could all the relay runners come to the start line, please?
And then everyone can hear you.
That's my impression.
Did you hear how much louder my voice was?
Could all the runners report to the start line, please? or false start, false start.
Anyways, I'm not coaching track.
Many, many years ago, I did but uh I did I did use a bullhorn or megaphone.
Step stool.
In our kitchen we have shelves that are too high.
And they are hard to reach.
And so we use a step stool.
A step stool is just a very very small step.
Sometimes it's two steps that lets someone get up to a higher area.
When I come home from the grocery store, in order to put the chips in the snack cupboard, I will sometimes use a step stool.
It's a little safer than using a chair.
You can fall off a chair when you get older.
But anyways, a step stool, a small stool you can step on so that you can reach things that are high up.
Curtain rod.
So, if you have curtains, they are most likely on a curtain rod.
This is the little metal or wooden piece sometimes plastic, that the curtain hangs from.
It allows you to close the curtains and open the curtains.
So you'll see here you have a curtain rod.
What is my next slide?
Oh yeah.
Okay.
I did put it in.
Here you have a curtain rod so you can open and close the curtains.
But what if you have a curtain that shower curtain.
Then it's called a shower curtain rod.
So here you have a shower curtain, and the metal thing it is hanging from is called a shower curtain rod.
So when you close the shower curtain for privacy you should do that.
You slide the curtain along the shower curtain rod.
So it is spring here in Ontario Canada, and it's warm enough so you can have plants outside, but sometimes it's too cold at night.
So a very common thing for people to do is to buy hanging baskets.
A hanging basket is pot with soil in it and a nice plant that you can hang up on your porch or outside your house, and what's nice about it is you can easily take it down and bring it in at night.
Until about the end of May in Ontario Canada, it can still go below zero at night and people often will have hanging baskets early in the spring because they can easily hang them outside during the day and then they can easily unhook them and bring them inside at night if it's going to be very, very cold.
So this is a hanging basket and I have to apologize.
Have a funny feeling that those are plastic plants.
So you could leave if those are plastic.
I don't know why I think that.
They look kind of plasticky to me.
Um but yes.
If you have plastic plants you could leave them outside, but very common to have hanging baskets early in the season so you can easily move them in and out.
Rain barrel.
So one of the things you need if you're a gardener is water.
You want to be able to water your plants.
Now if you live in the city you pay to use water that comes from your taps.
So you might want to collect rainwater using a rain barrel.
Rain barrel.
Um, usually a rain barrel is located under a downspout so that when it rains, the water from the roof of your house goes in the rain barrel, and then sometimes people will have a little tap at the bottom there with a hose, or more often they'll just take the water out using a pail.
But that is called a rain barrel trellis.
So I think last week we talked about the word lattice, where a pattern can be formed by wood or plastic woven together.
Uh and often people will have lattice an area where something can grow on it.
And if you have anything like this we're having trouble with my hand today.
Where a plant can grow we call this a trellis.
So So you might have a vine or other type of climbing plant and you might have a trellis, so that it can find its way up and it can grow.
So that is a trellis. fire pit.
Now there are a wide variety of fire pits.
A fire pit can simply be a shallow hole dug in the ground.
A fire pit can be more elaborate, like this, where they actually used bricks and they didn't just make a fire pit.
They made a seating area around the fire pit.
But a fire pit is is a place where you can safely have a fire.
We might even call it a campfire.
Usually in my part of the world, will have a fire pit from late spring until early fall.
So we have not used our fire pit yet this year.
But we might use it in a couple weekends.
We might have my family down and we might have just have a fire and sit around the fire.
And in that case my fire pit is just a shallow hole in the ground. we build the fire.
It's about this deep and we just build the fire in there.
Someday though maybe I will build a more elaborate fire pit like that one.
That looks very very cozy and fun.
It even has some if you look in the distance it even has some lighting over there.
Okay wind chime.
So a wind chime is something that has a series of sometimes they're made out of metal but little pipes or little wooden tubes, and each tube is cut to a length so it makes a certain note.
So when the wind chime moves, little bottom part moves and it hits all of the different tubes.
It sounds like a little like a random melody, a random song.
So again, a wind chime has a series of tubes cut to a certain length so that they all make like one is a c note, one is maybe a d, one is an e, and then the little thing in the middle gets moved around and hits each thing.
It plays I guess a pretty song.
They can be annoying if you're trying to make a video.
There was a video last year I was making that the wind chime was a little bit loud and it was a tiny bit annoying.
I ended up having to move.
But yes a wind chime.
It looks like that.
Sometimes people have them.
I don't think we have one on our property right now.
We used to but I don't think we do anymore. birdbath.
We did have a birdbath but we made the ultimate birdbath mistake.
The ultimate birdbath mistake is to leave water in the birdbath and to leave the birdbath out in the fall when it freezes.
And if you don't know what water does when it freezes water will expand.
So we had a birdbath many years ago but but I'm pretty sure we left water in it and it broke.
A birdbath is what we would call a garden feature or an outdoor ornament.
But basically it's a pedestal.
The bottom part you would call a pedestal, a shallow basin at the top, and if there's water in it, birds will come and they will play in the water and they will bathe in the water.
So a bird bath you can see this one is in use.
A bird bath is basically a bath for birds.
I mentioned this is a random lesson.
So now we've randomly gone from bird bath to electric meter.
In my part of the world you do need to pay for electricity.
I think that's pretty common everywhere.
And every house and every apartment in my part of Canada will have an electric meter.
So what an electric meter does is it measures how much electricity you are using, so that at the end of the month the electric company can send you a bill for the amount of electricity that you use.
So have what are called smart meters.
What that means is that the meter can talk directly to the electric company.
I can log in to my account on their website and see how much electricity I use every day.
Um and that's because we have an electric meter that's considered a smart meter.
So electric meter, you'll see these on the sides of houses.
If you go to an apartment, I think they're located more in the basement or if it's a small apartment building, they might all be on.
One outside wall is a solar panel.
A solar panel is amazing.
I can tell you firsthand that solar panels are really cool.
But if you buy a couple solar panels let's say you bought a couple solar panels on May 1st and you hook them up so it would power your internet antenna then the sun doesn't shine for two weeks.
It's a little bit disappointing.
Because in order to make electricity a solar panel needs sunshine.
So I'm happy to say that right now my little mini practice setup.
Uh I don't think I can open it on this computer.
But it's probably generating a, probably watching this live stream courtesy of solar power being generated from the roof of my barn and running my internet antenna.
Just a small little 100 watt system.
Actually I think it's 200 watts.
But anyways a solar panel.
A really cool thing that generates electricity. awesome by the way.
I'm when the sun shines.
The solar panels make me very very happy.
QR code.
If you scan this one it just takes you to my YouTube channel.
These are little codes that your phone can scan and it will usually take you to a website or a survey or a form that a coupon for a free concert ticket, something like that.
So this is a QR QR code.
You see them everywhere.
Now at least.
10 years ago when they were new you didn't but now there are QR codes everywhere. is a bike rack.
If you ride a bike, when you get to the place where you are going, you hope that they have a bike rack.
Outside of our school there is a bike rack.
Outside of the library there's a bike rack.
Outside of the mall there's a lot of bike racks.
And what you can do is you can put the front tire of your bike into the bike rack and then you can put a lock on it.
I don't know if that bike is locked.
But you can lock your bike.
You can chain your bike to the bike rack so that no one steals it.
So bike rack, a place to park your bike so it doesn't fall over, and a place where you can lock your bike or chain your bike up so no one will steal it.
Cart corral.
I don't know if that's what these are called in other English speaking countries, but in my part of Canada if you go to the grocery store, there are grocery carts.
I think they call them trolleys in the UK.
There are grocery carts and when you are done using it you put it in the cart corral.
Now, if you don't know the word corral, an older word for a place where they would keep horses in a farmyard.
It was usually round and it was a place where they would keep them temporarily or train them or teach them how to have a rider on them with a saddle, but now we use the word corral for other things.
So cart corral a place where you put your grocery cart or you're done using it.
After you've unloaded your groceries into your car, you put them in the cart corral.
Cup holder.
Uh almost every modern vehicle has one or two or three or four cup holders or seven.
If it's a minivan, a cup holder is a place to put your cup.
So that when you're driving, when you accelerate and when you hit the brakes, the cup doesn't fall over because it's in a nice little holder.
Do not have one of these.
This is on the list because I want one but I don't they're kind of expensive.
A garage door opener is something that will open your garage door when you simply push a button on the remote control.
My sister has a garage door opener.
I think my other sister has a garage door opener.
I have never had one.
I think the problem is they're kind of pricey.
They're a little bit expensive.
And I feel like I'll just get out of the car and open the garage.
In addition to that we don't often park our vehicles in our garage anyways.
So a garage door opener.
A small motor with a connection to the door and it will open and the garage door.
If you wonder if you want to know what it sounds like it's like that's the sound I think it makes.
I don't know for sure because I don't have one. of my vehicles have gas caps.
My new vehicle doesn't.
It has like this automatic thing where you can just put the nozzle in.
But a gas cap by the way it's not the flap.
It's It's the black thing the person is touching in this picture.
That is a gas cap.
It's basically the lid for the gas tank in your car.
So when you get to the gas station you unscrew the gas cap.
When you're done you screw and then tighten the gas cap.
So that it doesn't let gas fumes out and I don't think the gas would slosh enough to splash out.
In fact, I think cars prevent that.
But yes, that is the gas cap. lanyard.
So, this is the lanyard I wear when I go to the big YouTuber convention.
I don't go to big YouTuber convention.
Anyways, the lanyard is the actually like the the fabric or rope part of this.
So when you wear a lanyard I'm talking about the blue part here.
You can also have your keys on a lanyard.
Often teachers at school because we need keys for all the different doors.
We'll have our keys on a lanyard.
Or if we have a special event like in a few weeks we have grandparents day.
So Um you will have your ID card on a lanyard so people know who you're you are.
So that is a lanyard.
And this is a three hole punch.
This is something I only use when I forget to tell the photocopier to punch the handouts.
So when I make a photocopy at school I can tell the photocopier put holes in the paper so it can go into a three ring binder.
But I often forget and then I have to do it manually.
So, if I forget, I use the three hole punch to put three holes in a piece of paper so it can go into a binder.
A three hole punch.
Often at our school, it's like, where's the three hole punch?
Does does anyone know where the stapler is?
Does anyone know where the three hole punch is?
And it's not me.
I don't lose stuff.
So, anyways, that is a three hole punch.
