Brain Food

It's hard to argue with an activity that feeds your brain as well as the hungry people of the world. Check out the free rice web site and do both.

The premise is simple: play a multiple choice vocabulary game and for every correct answer, the organization donates grains of rice to a cyber bowl. You rack up bowls of rice as you improve your vocabulary. When you are finished the organization donates the rice you won, through the United Nations, to hungry people all over the world.

Be forewarned-some of these words are obscure (and this, coming from a crossword puzzle addict!) but there does not seem to be a penalty for getting the answers wrong, just an encouragement to try again.

I could see this as a great tool for classrooms of 10th and 11th graders trying to beef up their vocabularies before those standardized college tests. And who can argue with doing good for both body and soul?