Chess is Child's Play: Teaching Techniques That Work

Excellent book! This book will give you the tools to teach your child chess. I'm a parent who knows how to play chess but was not sure how to go about teaching my 4 yr old how to play. This book has allowed me to begin that process. It is laid out in a very logical and attractive format. Clear diagrams (for the parents only!) and easy steps to follow on how to teach your child. Also, there is a chapter on teaching tips which I have found most helpful and I heed the authors advice and refer back to it often. Also, contained within the lessons are instructive and concept-reinforcing "mini-games" which my daughter loves to play and looks forward to each time we have a lesson. Each chapter ends with helpful tips on how to deal with any challenges that the child might have had with the lesson. So far so good with my daughter. Some lessons she is more engaged than others, but we are both having fun. Some concepts need to be repeated for them to sink in(at least with my 4yr old), but that is to be expected. I have no doubt that this book will allow me to teach her how to play chess and that she will benefit from that in numerous ways. I look to write part two of this review upon finishing the book with my daughter. If you are considering buying the book, buy it! I highly recommend it. Laura and Bill, thank you for giving me the lesson plan that I needed to teach chess.

I am most known in another realm, the world of haiku, but throughout my life I have played chess, though not nearly so well as I would like. Several people I know in the haiku world are avid chess players, so it was no real surprise to me that one of them, Laura Sherman (along with co-author Bill Kilpatrick), might produce a book on the subject. Laura teaches the game professionally, and her book, Chess is Child's Play, is a model of how a game ought to be taught. It is designed to help adults teach children the game. It is completely thought through, beautifully designed, well illustrated, and useful in a hundred ways. I strongly recommend it to anyone who would like to create that special relationship with a child that teaching them something they will enjoy for their entire lives will bring. I have purchased several copies to share. I gave one to my partner, a lifelong teacher, who had never played chess, but it interested her enough to be considering taking it up herself. She in turn has sent it to her adult children, so they can teach her grandkids. The book's strategy is to study chess activity through mini-games: reduced forces that permits learning exactly how they interact without being overwhelmed by the complexity of the whole thing. This makes sense to me, and I think it will prove to be an effective methodology. I like too the order in which piece play is taught, not what might seem most obvious but rather a gradated approach from simplest (the rook) to the most complex (pawns are the soul of chess, as a famous master once remarked and every one of them since has seconded). If you have a child you'd like to introduce to chess, but maybe don't know quite how to go about it, this is the book for you. You won't regret it. Jim Kacian

Having spent several months reviewing this text, I recommend it to anyone who has ever tried to give beginners instruction in the game of chess. Firstly, the mini games. Anyone who has ever tried to get more than one child on the same sheet of music knows that it can sometimes be like having a bowling alley installed in your head. These mini games are designed to keep your child's interest while craftily getting them to practice the lesson over and over. Quite unique and fun for the parent and child at the same time. Secondly, the order of the lessons. For me the biggest struggle was keeping the attention of any child while I ground away at each piece movement usually starting with the pawn. It seems so simple to to me now that you would start instruction with THE ROOK and move up in difficulty from there. This book moves so fluidly from one lesson to the next and gradually eases your child up into tougher scenarios. Lastly, how the piece movements are taught. From rook to pawn. One short example. As a child I had great challenges understanding the movement of the knight because I was taught to make an "L" movement. How big was that "L" supposed to be again? Two up, one over? Three or four? It was the hardest piece for me by far. Laura and Bill's explanation of just having the knight "hop" the fence and land on the opposite color smacked me with a knight awakening. How logical and simple. How PURE! My daughter has no traces of the knight troubles that I had. This book is a must have in your shelf for anyone (experienced teacher or patient parent) that wants to spread the joy of chess. There is not a better priced chess text given the gems contained within.

Very in depth, step by step book that is essentialy training in becoming a chess teacher for your child. I’m overwhelmed with it because there is so much to know and keep in your head while keeping the focus of a small child at the same time. Not for the weak.

If you want to teach your kids to play chess, this book gives a straightforward and pragmatic approach to teach you, the parent, how to teach your kids chess. It is not a book to give to your children and send them to their room with a bunch of pieces and checkered board. Rather, it offers an approach that minimizes frustration, capitalizes on the strengths of a child's mind, and delivers far more than simply learning how to play a game. It guides parents not just through the rules and how the pieces move, but in understanding how kids learn, grow, and behave in the process. As Ben Franklin put it in 1750, "The Game of Chess is not merely an idle amusement; several very valuable qualities of the mind, useful in the course of human life, are to be acquired and strengthened by it, so as to become habits ready on all occasions; for life is a kind of Chess, in which we have often points to gain, and competitors or adversaries to contend with, and in which there is a vast variety of good and ill events, that are, in some degree, the effect of prudence, or the want of it." Sherman and Kilpatrick give simple and meaningful instruction that can be used to teach children both the idle amusement of chess AND those valuable qualities of the mind that are so useful in the course of human life. "Chess is Child's Play" offers a new approach and a straightforward set of tools for bonding with your kids, while teaching them a skill set that will be with them for life! Three cheers for "Chess is Child's Play" and a copy to each of my friends with young children!!

Laura Sherman and Bill Kilpatrick have done what many chess instructors have tried to do for decades. They have written a book that not only helps the parent teach their child how to play chess but explains why and how learning the game of chess will help your child as they enter the challenges of life. In life we must learn to work with others. This book teaches your child how to realize their potential and goals by working with others as a team, much as the pieces on a chessboard have to work with each other. The step-by-step lessons begins with making sure your child knows every possible detail about chess and its rules in terms they will understand. "The Coach's Corner" is one of our favorite parts of this book. You will gain so much additional insights by this one special feature. More than anything, "Chess is Child's Play" has given us a new and wonderful way of spending time with our children in a situation where we all enjoy our time to talk, learn and connect. If you are looking for a book that can teach chess and so much more then I encourage you to order this book today. You will be amazed. We were! In fact, we have already seen how well this book is received by others we have given a copy to. It makes the perfect gift that will last a lifetime.

Not bad- sometimes the descriptions & examples go on for a bit longer than I think is necessary. I did skip some parts of the book. It's an easy quick read. I bought this for teaching a chess club at my son's school & did find it to have some very practical tips & advice.

I am teaching my 4 and 3 year old nieces chess. When I tried to sit down for my first lesson with them, it was a disaster. I tried teaching pawns first not realizing that they are the most complicated piece to learn first. I had taken for granted how complicated and confusing all of the pieces and rules of chess would be for someone so young. So, I found this book on amazon, and I read it and gave it a shot. The book organizes the game in a way that allows the child to learn the game a piece at a time. And along the way, there are "mini-games" that are included that build on concepts in order to get a feel playing the pieces without the complication of playing a whole game. I think this is a brilliant way to teach young kids how to play. When I sat down for the second lesson, I was prepared, and we had fun. Kept the lesson short. And the third and fourth lessons have been going well so far. I plan on going through each of the sections of the book in order and see how it goes. But so far, my nieces are responding well. Highly recommend this book for teaching young kids. I would have been lost without it. And I have been playing chess for 30 years!

I wish I'd bought this book before trying to teach my four year old to play chess. I thought because I knew how to play chess that it'd be easy, and I'd read various things about teaching pawns first, but it didn't really work. Going through this book has worked much better. It starts with rooks, then bishops and the queen and the concepts of taking pieces and attacking and defending pieces, moving onto a mini-game where you each have those pieces and just try and take the opponents' pieces. It then moves on to the king, check and checkmate, which were concepts that I'd found it hard to explain, but which my son having worked through the book, didn't have any problem with (at this point I also introduced a mini-game, not in the book, where he had lots of pieces and I had just a king and he had to try and checkmate me, which worked quite well and which I would recommend). It then covers the knight, pawns, and rules such as castling. It doesn't cover anything in terms of tactics or strategy, and for older children you could probably just explain the rules and then get on with it, but I found the way it ordered everything and the explanations it had for introducing the various aspects of the rules very well thought ought and obviously well tested on actual children. Definitely much better than trying to wing it!

Livro muito bom. Perfeito para os pais que querem ensinar xadrez aos filhos pequenos, fornece uma sequência didática muito boa.

Il libro illustra vari esercizi che si possono fare con un bambino per insegnargli a giocare a scacchi. Evidenzia anche alcuni problemi che possono sorgere e da indicazioni su come cercare di risolverli. Mi sembra un ottimo libro scritto da insegnanti e scacchisti esperti. Ritengo che sia utile per chi vuole insegnare ad un bambino piccolo(3-4 anni) a giocare a scacchi e non sa da dove cominciare. Giudizio: OTTIMO

Simply awsome book. It really seems to keep the kids interested following the teaching methods.

Author structured the book very well. Introduced the pieces and concepts in the appropriate sequence based on the complexity of their movements. Usually we always start teaching with pawns. But pawns behalf differently at different places and it is very difficult for younger ones (2 to 5) to understand during the initial learning days. (1) Can start by moving two steps (2) But later can move only one step (3) They will travel straight but can attack diagonally that too only one step (4) Cannot move backwards (5) Promoted when reached last row (6) Finally, “en passant” most confused move for kids. In the book, it starts with rooks instead of pawns, followed by bishop. These pieces have single property (simple) i.e., move straight and diagonally respectively. Later it introduces slightly complex pieces in order Queen, King (With concept of check), Knight then finally pawns. In this book, other highlights are mini-games. For younger ones dealing with 32 pieces in 64 squares board is too overwhelming. With this mini-games author introduced the concepts of chess, attack, defend, check-mate with only fewer pieces. And these mini-games are fun and child feels the sense of achievement, which will keep them motivated to play again and again. My son (4 years) enjoyed the mini-games every well. The book is to learn only basics (in-fact too basic), it does not cover anything with respect to tactics or strategy. I will not consider this as con, but it would have been great if its covers one or two basic strategies.