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Brain Activities

December 18th, 2015

Try these fun brain activities! Now that it’s winter break, it’s easy to just turn off your brain and become a blob for two weeks. While you definitely do deserve a bit of a break from school, now is not the time to shut down completely. While celebrating the holidays, you can get creative! Ditch the books, but do some mental exercises. Here are some things you can do to keep your brain active over break.

 

  1. Read a good book: Put Animal Farm and Macbeth away and grab a book to read for pleasure. Cuddle up with a blanket and a hot chocolate and dive into Oprah’s latest faves.
  2. Do Chemistry conversions through cooking: As you’re helping prepare Christmas dinner, practice converting things from grams to ounces. Don’t forget sig figs!
  3. Write an essay analyzing on your favorite Holiday movie: Jk this is excessive.
  4. Maintain healthy habits: While it’s tempting to stay up all night devouring Orange is the New Black, doing that every night is going to make January 4 tough. Maintain a somewhat normal sleep schedule, work out and stay active!
  5. Color Coordinate your gift list: This is good practice for making effective finals study guides.
  6. Do something new: Try paddle boarding, bake a new recipe, or complete a puzzle!
  7. Brush up on life skills: Learn how to do a load of laundry (an important skill before you go to college!)
  8. Study for finals: With finals coming up at the end of the month, putting in time now will get you in good shape. Start by reviewing old tests, making notecards, or organizing your notes into flow charts.
    Brain Activities

Use Your Break Wisely!

December 13th, 2015

Oh the weather outside is frightful

Use Your Winter Break Wisely!

Ok the weather is pretty nice…blue skies for days…Ahhhh. Winter Break! A time to relax, eat, hang out with family, and celebrate. You should definitely do all of those things… (here comes a but)…(drumroll please)…

BUT

You should ALSO use your break wisely! Open that backpack and do some studying over Winter Break. It’s been a long, hard semester, and you do not want to spoil all that you have put into it by slacking right before finals. With the biggest test of the semester right around the corner, many of you already have a study guide or an idea of what your final will look like. Use that!

 

You can start making flashcards for vocab. That’s something you can do with Mariah Carey belting out “All I Want for Christmas…is an A!” and it’s been proven that listening to music while studying can improve your performance on the test!

 

You should make a detailed outline with flow charts, timelines and pretty colors. This will refresh your memory of the topics and provide a beautiful study guide you can use once finals week arrives.

 

Grab your old tests or practice tests, and retake them, checking your answers as you go. This will help you decide where you need to allocate the most time for studying, and where you can skim a bit because you already have a good handle on the material.

 

DO NOT simply run your eyes over every single chapter in the book, or every single page of notes you’ve written. This is a waste of your time. Rereading is a passive activity, plus it is much too general. With so much material to cover, you are better off zeroing in on what’s important (hint: what’s on the study guide or what was on old tests).
Have fun over break, but spending the entire two weeks binge-watching Parks and Rec for the 3rd time will come back to haunt you when finals week arrives! Put in a few hours over break and I promise you’ll thank yourself later!

 

Retaining Information Over Winter Break

December 11th, 2014

For some students, their fall semester finals do not happen until after they return from winter break. This is frustrating because a lot of information can be lost over the two weeks that school is not in session. If you are a student at one of these high schools, here are some ways you can make sure that you do not forget any material over the break.

 

Make sure you at least glance over material you have learned every day. Do a few review problems for math and go through your vocabulary flashcards for foreign languages or English. This does not have to take very long and is very effective at keeping the material fresh in your head.

 

If you have homework assigned over the break, do not save it until right before you go back to school. Either try and get it done in the beginning, or before you even go on break, or work on a little bit every day. If you do not look at it at all until the Sunday before school starts again, the concepts will likely be fuzzy and you will be really stressed trying to finish it up the night before.

 

Create a study plan if you know which classes will have the more difficult finals. This way you can start your studying, and know exactly what to do. It will make it easier to do your studying when you have a clear end goal in sight, and starting your studying early will make those A’s even easier to reach!

 

Winter break is also a great time to go over any concepts you never really got the grasp of but skimmed over because the class kept moving.  Review them with a tutor who can help teach you and make the connection that you are missing.  This way you will fully understand before you get to your final!

The Correlation of Winter Break and Short-term Senioritis

December 12th, 2012

As the year comes to an end, and the holidays are just around the corner, students and tutors alike spend more and more time wishing for the holidays and less and less time burrowing into books and texts. Unfortunately, Mira Costa’s finals are set just after the winter break. The combination of a prolonged break and the holiday festivities predictably will result in temporary “senioritis” in all grade levels. This manifests itself in last minute cram sessions in the days, hours, and minute’s right before finals. Not only that, many teachers will assign lengthy projects to be done over the break. And, just like studying for finals get crammed in at the last minute. This can be avoided with good time management and staying on top of your kids class work. Be aware that finals are coming up and what projects will be assigned for the break.

To accommodate this relaxed state of being carried over from Thanksgiving and the upcoming winter, Study Hut is now brimming with a plethora of new tutors, all ready to make sure our students stay on top of their academics, even through the winter season. We will make sure that your kids are still working and finishing those pesky winter break projects and upcoming finals. Come in and check out our magnificent Douglas fir and our vibrantly crimson poinsettias, the festive Christmas decorations and lights, and the array of stockings representing each and every tutor in the Hut. Study and still enjoy the holiday spirit!