Teaching chess to kids

grimbergen

Does anybody have any experience of teaching chess to kids and recommendations on the best way to go about this? What age is good for the to start at etc. My daughter is 5 and has asked me about playing so I'm wondering if she's the right age to teach her the basics.

im invisible

horses are weird

cavedave

5 year olds can learn the rules but they dont seem to be able to get the strategies that are needed for chess. There could be exceptions but I am talking from my experience of teaching kids each week.

5 year olds can learn draughts. This teaches playing inside a board, taking turns, obeying rules and many other things useful for chess. And draughts itself is a pretty good game when you get into it. Mancala is good but it is based on counting. I have not tried teach it to 5 year olds but once they can count it could become a good teaching tool.

looseliver

I've been teaching kids myself for about a year, i find these a great resource. the first has printable pdf lessons which i use a lot:
www.chesskid.com/
http://www.chesskids.com/newcourse/index.htm
Whenever i'm teaching really young kids i normally don’t play a full game for a few weeks, instead i use other games based on teaching them to move the pieces. For example I teach them how the pawns(piggies) and king (old farmer – he’s old because he moves so slow) move and then play a game of pawns vs king. If a pawn gets to the 8th square the kid wins. I then swap sides but give them a couple of knights (sheep dogs) to help capture the pawns. A win here is when all the pawns are gone.
These and other games are on the first website. Let me know if you cant find it I will send it on.

grimbergen

Many thanks for the excellent advice and links looseliver, I'll try and follow that.