Posted on 2nd August 2012

Keeping your brain active during the holidays

The summer holidays are undoubtedly wonderful: a glorious six to eight weeks of rest, relaxation and probably also a great deal of fun after a year of working hard at school. The only problem is that often we completely switch our brains off over the holidays and then it feels like an awful wrench to begin studying again in September. So that you don’t feel quite so rusty when term starts, here are some (hopefully not too taxing) tips for keeping your brain on form over the vacation…

1. Board games like Trivial Pursuit, Articulate, Scrabble and Balderdash are all a lot of fun, but also require you to use those brain cells.

2. Visiting museums and galleries will stimulate your mind, ignite your curiosity and fuel your imagination. My favourites are the Science Musuem, Natural History Museum and the V&A. The Wellcome Collection is also full of fascinating things.

3. If you’re going away on holiday, try and pick up a few phrases in the language of your destination. What would be even better if you can also have a go at using them.

4. Keep reading plenty of books, and try to include a mixture of fiction and non fiction. Maybe you could also have a go at reading the odd article in the newspapers. Join your local library to gain access to hundreds of different books.

5. If you have entrance exams coming up in a few months then it might be a good idea to start doing the occasional practice paper. You don’t need to spend hours studying every day, but you’d be amazed at how doing a little bit of work every now and again over the holidays will help.

6. Take a look at our tweets and learn our ‘word of the day’. See if you can use it in a sentence or two during the day to help you to remember it.

7. Try at least one new thing each day. This could be trying a new food, going somewhere you’ve never been before or doing a new activity or sport.

8. Watch foreign films with subtitles.

9. Write for at least ten minutes a day. Maybe you could start a diary, write a letter to a friend or compose a poem about something that has inspired you.

10. Pick a topic (mountains, the Olympics, the Aztecs…) and make a scrapbook of all the things that you have found out about and that are connected to the topic.