Summer ideas for new programmers?

[Wawa]

Ok, so I learned (very basically) how to use LabVIEW this year as my team's default programmer and I want to improve for next year. I used a lot of basic code and copied a lot from examples other teams had, and I'd like to know what would make really good practice programming projects. I won't have access to my team's robot, so I'm really looking for projects that will help me get more familiar with different functions and possibly make more advanced code.

Also, I found one new recruit who is interested in programming, but she's more interested in written code. I can teach her the little that I know in LabVIEW, but I also wanted to be able to help her try out Java. We're planning for her to be the main programmer after I graduate next year, so any ideas about how I can start her off and which language I should use?