[chammi]

I am in the same position. I have a 10 year old boy and he is very kinetic.

One thing that was good for several lessons was a board game that I made (draw, scan into Photoshop and add color and text) Basically he and I moved around the board (we used a penny and yen as player markers) If you fell on a CHALLENGE space or the same square as another player, you had to draw a CHALLENGE! Card. I made these in Word.

The cards and board can be as lo-fi as you like. All you really need is a couple of markers and some posterboard. I've heard of people making board games with spread sheets as well.

The real secret is the challenge cards. They had sort of mini-games printed on them (think Mario Party). I tried to add a couple of new cards every week.

Examples: "UNDERWATER: hold your breath as long as you can. The first person to breathe is the loser." We also had a version with wall squats ("sitting" back against the wall and feet planted together about 8" in front of you.). We had a mini game where we played "War" with a deck of 5-10 cards. We had one where we played newspaper island (last person to stay on the newspaper which is folded in half each round wins). We had table curling (using flat marbles to try to get as close to the edge of the coffee table without going over)

The key is to play the game in English, but let the minigames be physical things so that you can play (more) fairly against the kid. Obviously, my kid would ace the Japanese and I the English if we let them be about the language. But he always won the staring contest and newspaper island, so it wasn't stacked in my favor when we centered it around physical games or games of chance.

Anyway, there is an idea for people with competitive kids.