Chess anyone?

Sarah and Matthew recently decided that they love chess. I've never been a large fan of chess even though I own chess sets. After watching a documentary regarding children who play chess, Sarah has decided she wants to become good enough at the game that she could play blindfolded or over the phone without seeing the board. Come again? She's serious.

Each day she's been hurriedly doing her chores so she can have more time to play chess. She runs up to me with excitement, begging to set up a game. Nathan collected chess sets as a hobby before we had children, so we have a closet full of beautiful chess sets carved in stone, onyx, wood, ivory, metal, and fossil. Matthew LOVES to open the wooden cases and lovingly stroke the Turkish set carved with elephants. He'll close the box- almost reverently- and resign himself to play with the less-exotic carved ivory set with normal pieces. I really need to get them a cheap plastic set...just as a precaution.

They wanted to play chess several times a day each day this week and yesterday there was a breakthrough...Sarah was beating me when I wasn't trying to let her win. In the beginning games I would intentionally bait her with easy captures. Last night I played my best (which admittedly never was very good...I know less than a handful of strategies....all of which were learned this week from a book as I tried to educate myself on the game so I could teach them) and she captured my most valuable pieces before long. She's catching on quickly to strategy and she analyzes the board pretty well. Matthew also loves to point out possible dangers for each move. He's usually quite good at seeing when his piece could be captured, although he does like to play with more gusto than I prefer. He loves to capture pieces with the same vigor as the animated character from 'Geri's Game'...it's pretty funny to watch. As for Daniel, he desperately wants to play, so I set up a game with only pawns for him to start learning the moves.

I've been reading books on chess and they've learned stuff that I never knew my entire life (until now). I also found a great website for teaching kids everything about chess. The website makes it a game to learn all the names of the squares, the pieces, rules of movement, etc. It's a great resource.

We found out about a chess club that meets monthly in a public library here. Wanting to expose Sarah and Matthew to the game more, I inquired about the group. There's no members as young as her on the roster; it's mostly ages 10 and up. I'm trying to learn more techniques to teach her, so we'll see what happens. I realize she most likely will not become a master player of chess anytime in her life; I think she'll eventually lose interest and move onto something else. HOWEVER, as long as she is so interested in it, I want to nurture her ability as much as possible. She has a surprising knack for it. It's surprising to me because I assumed if she didn't love math, she wouldn't love chess. I'm happy to be wrong.

In my research about chess, I found a lot of surprising things. Evidently, chess promotes cognitive development so well that it has become a required class in some school districts. Frequently playing chess even has been proven to increase reading ability. It affects critical thinking, spatial intelligence, analyzing facts, calculating risk, planning for the future, etc. Test scores improved in ALL subjects when students played chess. I never had heard that before I started looking into it.

At Back to School night we asked the teachers whether there is a chess club at the school. There is, but they don't allow kindergarteners to play. I'm emailing the teacher in charge of the club and arguing a case for Sarah and Matthew. I hope they are allowed in.