I have two young daughters, 5 and 8 that I've been teaching for about 3 years now. My oldest is a state champion and youngest is accomplished for sure. They also play in their school chess club and haven't lost yet even against 6th graders (they're in Kindergarten and 2nd grade).
The key to their success has been to start slow and show the basic concepts that matter. We started by playing the pawn game where you setup the board with only pawns, the player to push a pawn to the opposite side of the board wins. This teaches the concept of pawn chains, protection and positional advantage. Once they master this, say after a few weeks or so, begin adding pieces in this order: Rooks, Bishops, Queen, Knight, King.
Teaching check and checkmate are somewhat difficult concepts for starters. We did this after they were familiar with how all of the pieces move. Place pennies completely around the King in the center of the board, then place another opposing piece somewhere on the board and remove the pennies that the opposing piece controls. Start with one opposing piece and then add more. Once 2-3 pieces are on the board there should be no pennies left (thus no escape squares) and the King should be checkmated.
Once this becomes easy start showing them some basic opening concepts. I liked showing them the italian game, wherein, of course, the moves are as follows: e4...e5, Nf3...Nc6,Bc4...Bc5. Show them that start by moving a pawn to the center, then develop your minor pieces first (preferably letting the King castle Kingside quickly), then move the Queen to connect the Rooks. These concepts will allow them to win a large majority of games against kids their age without a doubt. Stress having them watch for their and their opponents hanging pieces!
Next start doing basic chess tactics (puzzles). This will get them past the problem you mention of engaging them to understand K+R checkmates and makes it enormously more exciting! You might even want to come up with some sort of reward system to encourage them, like so many points for a creative answer and when they accumulate x many points they earn some well entitled reward. I suggest the following book from amazon for puzzles: http://www.amazon.com/Manual-Chess-Combinations-Vol-School/dp/5946930451/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234842790&sr=8-1
This book is great because it has straightforward puzzles with clearly explained goals, such as White Mates in 2 by means of a Queen Checkmate, White Mates in 2 by means of a Rook Checkmate, White to gain a Queen. Many other puzzle books out there are great, but are geared more towards experienced players who already know the basics or more and are comfortable with puzzles that simply ask you to find the best way to proceed in a position. Kids will quickly become disillusioned by these puzzles, but tell them that the puzzle at hand can be solved by gaining a Rook and their attention becomes well focused and in another few years the "how to proceed" puzzles will become possible.
My kids both play daily on ICC and about weekly on chess.com, participate regularly on the local and state wide tournament scene and the oldest has played in a past national tournament. I'm not exactly the greatest chess player, but like to think I'm an accomplished coach for children. If I can help you further I'd be happy to recommend other books or resources that will help.
One last recommendation that I can't underemphasize, get Chessmaster for the PC. Josh Waitzkin has some tutorials on it that are simply amazing and the product is very well priced. You should be able to get it at a local store or from amazon for under $30. You can also start your kids playing some of the lower rated Chessmaster opponents and as they defeat these players have them give it a go at the next hardest player until they begin regularly defeating these. I would recommend more play against other children more though than against computer players.
Good luck, you've chosen a difficult but well rewarding game to teach your kids. I hope they learn to love it as much as do my children.
Hi everyone, I'm currently teaching two young girls (aged 9 and 11) how to play chess. My question is how can I best teach them? They tend to be difficult to keep focused and teaching even basic concepts can be quite hard (like rook and king checkmates).
If you have taught a young kid chess how have you done so, or if not how would you do so?