You want to have a fun time in the long holiday. You want to forget the books and thinking and learning and just cut loose. I know the feeling. At the same time you certainly don't want to lose momentum on your quest to become a better student. You want to keep your brain sharp and all you learned the previous year intact. You want to begin the next year with a sharp brain. Studies show that you can actually regress as much as three months, academically speaking, if you don't put your brain to good use during the holidays. None of us can afford to go backwards in our learning.
Well, the good news is there are fun ways to keep your brain working. The long holiday is the perfect time for fun, learning games, some of which can even be found on Facebook. I like Word Drop. That is a great exercise in concentration; a great way to build your vocabulary. Another great brain-building exercise is to get out of the house and explore exhibits at the museum. If you're going on vacation, you can do fun-filled research about the place you're visiting. Keep a diary or create an album for Facebook. You can even help plan the trip. That's fun and it helps develop research and organisational skills. You'll learn about the history and culture of a place.
The great thing about learning during the long holiday is that you can make it a social event. You can get together with friends and watch old-time movies or documentaries that demonstrate how to write in a fun-filled way. These old movies often have better story lines, better dialogue and character development. Watching a documentary is a way to listen to a good essay. For other fun-filled learning activities, try Googling summer learning activities. You'll find games and sites online that are certainly not limited to the holidays. There's also good sites for building skills in science and foreign languages. You'll find science experiments and foreign movies to explore. For English, try crossword puzzles. Crossword puzzles can be very addictive and you can find them online too. If you Google online crossword puzzles you'll find puzzles from The New York Times archives as well as USA Today. There's also BestCrosswords.com. These sites offer challenging crossword puzzles that will sharpen your thinking skills and help you build your vocabulary.
Many of the activities and mind games you find online can be done with a friend. A site called Mind Games for the Summer suggests the Word a Week Challenge. It's easy to play and it will build your vocabulary. Enlist your friends in the game. Each week, someone chooses a word and shares it with the group. (You could do a couple of words a week). This educational site suggests that you choose unusual words that will be helpful in your writing and life. The site suggests words like bodacious (blatant), kerfuffle (commotion), menagerie (collection of animals), obfuscate (to blur or make confusing). Then they suggest e-mailing the word of the week to the group. Everyone tries to use the word during the week in his or her conversations with each other.
It's a fun way to learn new vocabulary words and think of the possibilities for Facebook. You can use words to define postings or pictures on Facebook. Your pictures can have a theme or you can even use the words for your status. Doing the research to find a great word to define the week can be a lot of fun. The Mind Games for the Summer site also suggests a game called Math Chain. Create a maths problem one step at a time and add to it every day. At the end of the week you can see who gets the maths problem right in your group. My favourite game on this site is Literature Hunt, which is like a scavenger hunt in the literary world. The site suggests that you create a list of clues for a book or literary characters and provide answers each day. Take turns with your friends. This is a great way to refresh your memory about the books you've read and you'll probably find books you want to read from some of the postings.
There are vocabulary quizzes, left brain/right brain quizzes, proof-reading quizzes and much more on this site. Another great site called Summer Learning Activities and Online Games provides reading and writing activities, podcasts and videos for students from four to 18. There are cool science experiments, links to online games and maths games through the link Calculation Nation. You don't have to give up the holiday spirit of learning just because you're back in school. Check out these sites and every day will seem like a holiday. Better yet, you'll be boosting your skills. Use your imagination. Use the Internet to explore what you're interested in. Even reading on the Internet helps you to keep your reading life active-especially if you're following news events.
Check out these sites for holiday learning:
•Mind Games for the Summer:
http://homeworktips.about.com/od/preparingforcollege/a/summergames.htm
• Summer Learning Activities and Online Games:
http://www.thinkfinity.org/?q=summer-learning-activities