These are some of my preferred places to go for games and activity ideas. There are a lot of lists like this online, so I’m going to try and keep it short and practical.
For Elementary (E) & Junior High (JH) Activities
- (E, JH) Englipedia – game/activity ideas organized by textbook.
- (JH) English Web Book – absolutely wonderful :D
- (E) Hi Friends Lessons for ALTs! I’ve gotten lots of good ideas from this website that my students loved.
- (E) AkitaJET translations of the lesson plans for Hi Friends.
- (JH) JET Sendai Educom Lessons (Year 1, Year 2, Year 3) – I’ve found quite a few activities here as well. Good for middle school, all grades. (Englipedia is still the best, though.)
Favorite Review/Any-Grammar Games of All Time
- Super Mario Typhoon PowerPoint Game. More Mario fun:
- Englipedia Mario Board Game 2.0 – soooo easy to prepare for, and the game board is really cool.
- Englipedia Mario Board Game, 3-tier – Level 1 (1-nen), Level 2 (2-nen).
- EP Puzzle Scramble – My students enjoyed this.
- EP Memory Race – I like to theme mine, like with One Piece or Spongebob-themed questions.
- AkitaJET Dragon Quest PowerPoint review game – whoever made this is amazing, although preparation time is horrendous.
Flash Cards
- Stella English Learning Materials – I used the adjectives flashcards.
- Christmas flashcards and many holiday activities from MES English.
Bulletin Boards
- My holiday/themed bulletin board posts: Valentine’s Day (one, two), St. Patrick’s Day, Back-to-School, Cinco de Mayo theme (I think it was too much…but I tried), “Up” theme, Halloween, Christmas (one, two, presentation), Winter Vacation
- (JH) ALT◆JTE Connect – Great website with some good ideas for middle school communication activities and bulletin boards.
- And Pinterest!
素敵なライフ 
Incoming JET. Infinitely grateful to you for sharing these. Your blog now has a new follower!
I’m also a new JET and I’m very happy to find your blog. Thanks for all the information and tips. I came here for English Board ideas but I got so much more! Just wanted to say thank you :)
I’m so happy to hear that! I’m glad you found it useful :)
Hi your blog is great.
I heard that maybe you have online copies of the Hi friends CDs and flash cards?
My school seem to have misplaced some of these things.
Hi there! I’m sorry, but I don’t have online copies. My school bought most of the materials. We didn’t have the newest A4-sized flashcards, but we managed fine using older flashcards from Eigo Note (英語ノート), the old version of the textbook.
http://teaching.wildmushroomland.com/ seems to have lots of the Hi Friends materials you’re looking for, and although it’s not as new as Hi Friends, all the Eigo Note flashcards (which are similar in theme to Hi Friends) are available on http://www.eigonoteblog.com/.
Thanks
I’ll make it work with tje cards we have and see if I need to make some or print out some from the eigonote blog.
Hi. I’m wondering how many hours japanese children in kindergarten have to learn/play with english. Is it the case of every kindergarten that they have english? Do they have other languages to choose?
Hi there! Thanks for your questions. As far as I know, most regular (non-immersion) kindergartens in Japan do not have a mandatory English program. Of my three schools, I spent the least time at the kindergarten. I didn’t teach lessons there—I just spent time with the kids in their regular activities, and sometimes played an English-themed game (like duck-duck-goose or four corners) or read picture books to them in English. Some kindergartens may offer other languages, but I believe that would be unusual.
To be specific, in my case I went to the kindergarten in my town as kind of a special visitor on Fridays. I nearly always only visited the 4-5 (年中) and 5-6 (年長) year old classes. I went to one class per week on Friday afternoons for a couple of hours, and there were six total classes, so I saw the kids in one class once every six weeks. We played outside, and I would teach them words that they wanted to say and try to insert simple English into things we were doing (“Wow!” “Look!” “One, please.” “SHARK!” Haha.)
I really think it depends on the kindergarten. If it’s an international kindergarten or has a special English program, it would likely be different.