When you’re at work, you likely only utilize certain parts of your brain. Accountants utilize the mathematical side, artists use the creative side, and whichever part you don’t use as frequently may become sluggish and underutilized. If you want to maintain full brain function, the fun activities on these websites will help you stay as sharp as a tack.

Games for the Brain
This simply designed website features a variety of brain-training exercises for every type of thinking. NumberHunt improves your basic math skills, Colored Lines uses logic and special reasoning, and Memocoly improves your memory by asking you to remember a series of colors in the order in which they appear on the screen. Games for the Brain even allows you to rack up points to monitor your improvement over time.

Lumosity
You’ve likely heard of the Lumosity website, but it’s worth the hype. This attractive site allows you to create a profile and build a personalized training program, specifying the areas of the brain you want to work on. It incorporates memory, speed, problem solving, attention, and flexibility into its simple games and tests, and it tracks your improvement in each area along the way.

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Teachers often hear the question, “When am I ever going to use this?” when teaching things like fractions, chemistry or other subjects. Learning about economics and money management, however, is obviously important for the world outside school. These online guides will help educators to develop lesson plans that will keep students interested in business, taxes, and economics:

Understanding Taxes for Teachers
Teaching students about taxes may seem intimidating to anyone who isn’t an accountant, but this helpful guide from the IRS presents it in an easily intelligible form. Here you’ll find a custom resource list, lesson plans, educational standards and even downloads and PowerPoint presentations describing the basic components of filing taxes.

Federal Reserve Education
The educational division of the Federal Reserve’s website offers classroom resources for students ranging from kindergarten to 12th grade. You can browse the website by lesson plans, activities or publications, and even search by topics on everything from financial fundamentals to monetary policy.

Investor.gov’s Classroom Resources
Investor.gov states that the best time for kids to learn about money is when they’re young, and that teaching children about managing their finances can help them be wise with money in the future. This website provides key topics and suggested activities for teaching kids about credit, savings and investments to help them make smart money decisions as adults.

Public Domain/Public Domain

Chess variants are other games derived from or inspired by the game of chess. Most of these games use different pieces, have different game boards, or use different rules from traditional chess. Whether you already play and love chess or you simply can’t get into the game, just about anyone will love to play these exciting and logical alternatives to the historical game of chess.

Chess960
Chess960 is a chess variant that uses the same pieces and the same game board, but the pieces in the first rank are randomized, with opposing pieces mirroring them. This is a great game for expert chess players, because it makes it impossible to memorize opening lines.

Glinski’s Hexagonal Chess
This derivation of chess uses a unique hexagonal board instead of the standard square chess board. The board contains 91 cells in three different colors, and it uses the usual chess pieces, with the addition of one extra bishop and one extra pawn. Glinski’s chess is an incredibly popular variant, especially in Eastern Europe.

Apocalypse
Apocalypse is played on a much smaller scale than regular chess, using only a 5×5 board and two horses and five footmen on each team. The two players make their moves simultaneously, and the game is over when one player captures all of the other player’s footmen.

CC-BY-SA-2.0/Flickr/soupboy