Board Pictionary is a great way of reviewing vocabulary, particularly nouns, and is especially useful when no other ideas for a lesson plan are forthcoming. It can also however, spell disaster for the students.
Many Japanese kids seem to be great little artists and are constantly doodling manga style pictures during English class. I leave them to it, since said doodles are often amazing. Curiously enough though, these self same kids are as inept at Pictionary as I am at Japanese. And that's very inept indeed.

Last week I gave one girl the task of drawing 'dog'. A dog. 'むり.' she says. Impossible. 'Not impossible. Easy.' says I. This was a demonstration class with student's parents lining the walls of the classroom and here's a student informing me that drawing a picture of a dog is beyond the scope of human ability.

'むり、むり.'
'No. It's very easy. Try.'
'むりよ！.'
' No. It's eas...look. Here. I've drawn one. Copy this.'

It took her a good 10 minutes to copy the picture, tongue out in desperate concentration. The tail was a little fat. Rub it out. Take a few minutes to to get the curve just so. Stand back. Survey, survey. Jesus Christ! It's Pictionary!! The fun game of fast drawing and rapid guessing. Draw girl, draw!

'Horse'. This from the back of the room.
'No'.
'Cat?'
'No'
'Animal?'
'It's an animal yes. But no'.
'Racoon Dog?'
'...'

Today - a martyr to education - I decided to play Board Pictionary again. I asked a first grader to draw 'shoe'. He started crying in front of the blackboard. I told him to draw 'pen' instead. He froze, chalk in hand. An eternity passes by.

'Here' says I, 'I've drawn one. Copy this.'