to get the wind knocked out of (one)

Welcome to English as a Second Language Podcast number 458: Going to the Playground.

This is English as a Second Language Podcast episode 458. I’m your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.

Our website is eslpod.com. Go there to download a Learning Guide for this episode, which will give you all of the vocabulary, definitions, new sample sentences with the new words that we talk about, additional definitions, cultural notes, comprehension questions, and a complete transcript of this episode.

This episode is a story called “Going to the Playground.” It’s going to introduce some common vocabulary you might use if you are on a playground, a place where kids play. Let’s get started.

My wife was out of town on business and our nanny was sick, so I took the day off from work to take care of our two kids: Livia, who is two, and Augustus, who is three and a half. I thought that going to the playground would be a good thing to do, but it turned out to be an