Ok, here are some ideas I have tried out a few times: Sometimes they worked well, sometimes they didn't:

I have tried them out with freshman and senior students ( mostly girls, as most of my students have always been girls, as in very common in language departments at Chinese universities, especially in Guangxi province )

1) Word Association: ask students to explain what comes into their mind when they see or hear the following words, vocabulary: beauty, love, intelligence, universe, Friday night, Africa, Australia, California, Korea. This is good, because you will hear some stereotypes, as well as a few original ideas that you might not have expected. This exercise worked well with both the freshmen girls and the older ladies, 22 year olds.

I mostly had classrooms with just a blackboard and chalk, although I had plenty of chalk and boxes of different coloured chalk. I would write down the words on the board with different colours of chalk. I had the advantage I guess of speaking Chinese and being able to write pinyin, sometimes I would write pinyin on the board, but I don't really like to translate the vocabulary.

2) Colour psychology: What do you feel when you hear the names of these colours or see the following colours? What sort of significance do these colours have in different cultures? Red, blue, green, pink, black and white, grey? Colour and it's role when it comes to employment? Fashion and the use of colour?

3) The curious Alien: And alien arrives on Earth and knows nothing: He/she is a bit scared, nervous, anxious, maybe lonely. The alien will asks many information questions. I tell the students I am an alien and I start to ask them questions about objects in the classroom: What is this? Where does it come from? How does it work? How was it made? What is the purpose of this object?

4) The Fashion Show: I had a few classes of fourth year girls classes at my last university. Some of the students were very elegant and would come to class beautifully dressed. I asked some of them to come to the front of the class. We would discuss what they were wearing. This works well in both summer and winter. The girls would describe each others dresses, skirts, stockings, shoes, hairstyles, and jewelry. It is surprising how much conversation you can get out of this. It did not work so well with the freshman girls, many who were much less sophisticated and would just wear jeans and T-shirts to class, but other ideas can be used in that case.

Sounds like you have the ability to teach your students well to me. Imaginary scenarios, like your aliens are very interesting. I do all sorts of stuff- like granddad is ill- creeping into his room while he's asleep. What for? -elicit elicit elicit? To measure him up of course! And what do we need for that?. Be prepared, make preparations, order the wood, cut the wood. What with?

It's a good thing to use your own experiences too ,like you do with the fashion industry.