Chess stories - the magical island

Do you use stories when you teach chess?

I put this one together with pieces and bits that I heard here and there. I thought it was a bit silly but my five-year-old daughter loved it.

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Once upon a time, there was an magical island in the middle of the sea. Actually, it was so magical that it was made of vanilla and chocolate! Do you want to see a map of the magical island? (I produced a chess board and I let her play with it for as long as she wanted.)

And you know what? In the island lived a lot of people. They were the people of the day and the people of the night. (I produced the pieces. After the initial surprise I told her the names of the pieces. She made a little school with the them. The Queens were the teachers and the pawns were the pupils. The pupils-pawns would line up on their rank and if any of them would get off their rank the other 'students' would tell the teacher.

At this point she knew that there were two teams, that they started at opposite sides of the board and that the Queen was an important piece.

To be continued...

This story shows how to prepare the game. You can tell the story while you put the pieces on the board and the child can do the same.

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Fair's fair

Once upon a time, there was a KING and a QUEEN. The King had a ROOK so the QUEEN said "Fair's fair, I want a ROOK too". The King had a KNIGHT so the QUEEN said "Fair's fair, I want a KNIGHT too". The King had a BISHOP so the QUEEN said "Fair's fair, I want a BISHOP too". And they lived together happily and the had lots of CHILDREN (and you put the pawns on the board).

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Again, I admit that it sounds silly, but it worked like a charm.

To be continued...

Annotations for very young chess students

We put 1-8 and a-h stickers on the side of a board. No explanations were needed, she just enjoyed putting the stickers.

The idea is that every file is a street. I let her name the streets beginning with the letter of the file. My daughter chose Love (Amor) Street, Beautiful (Bonita) Street, Heart (Corazón) Street... all the way to Fairy (Hada) Street.

Then the game begins by asking: Who lives in Gato (Cat) Street, 8? Answer: A black knight. Who lives in Flor (Flower) Street, 2? Answer: A white pawn. Edit: She also gets to make questions.

I was very surprised because very soon she was able to remember the positions without the board in front of her. Then we played a game and I helped her a bit with the annotations. "This pawn lives on e2 but now it's moving to e4."

She also annotated our little game with pictures of hearts, cats, fairies and flowers.  :)

The interview

You play as a journalist and the kid plays as himself/herself.

It goes like this:

"Breaking News! We interrumpt (insert a popular TV programme here) to bring this important report: This kid knows a lot about chess!"

After the first questions "What's your name? How old are you?" the "journalist" starts making questions about chess and it's obvious that he doesn't know anything about the game.

"Can you tell us how the tower moves?"

"It's not a tower, it's a rook"

"My favourite piece is the Princess."

"You mean the Queen."

"And the Bishop can jump over other pieces."

"That's the Knight"

"And the King is so important because it moves a lot of squares."

"No, it only moves one square at a time."

Correcting an adult is usually fun for children.