How to teach a 7 year old chess from scratch?

I'm teaching my 7 year old to play chess right now. I got a chesskid membership and he loves it. We watch the videos together, and play OTB 1/day - often not 'real chess', but a game called "The Farmer and the Pigs". :o)  where he has all of his pawns, and I have a king. His objective is to promote a pawn - mine to stop him. After a few games now, he wins every time - So now I get a KN as well. It will be interesting to see how many pieces I'll eventually need to have to beat him as he keeps improving...

He loves chesskid - he has a 300 rating in 15 min games and there's always other similarly rated kids to play. And it has a tactics trainer geared for kids. It's great.

Does your Kid already have an idea how to mate with Rook and King against a lone King?

Simply, "we don't know how to teach. We are not doing a good job somewhere. Somehow in the 'How' and 'What' we are falling down on the job." This was a math educator. You think it is a better situation in chess? Of course not. Just look at the success rate, say, here in the States: out of 40 million who "play" chess, only thousands of a percent (or 2,500 players) have reached the expert level. A horribly, alarmingly, inexcusably LOW!

One problem is that we all teach by recalling our memories of having been taught (the phenomenon of apprenticeship of observation, the term coined in 1975 by Dan Lortie). And what was it? the moves first, before anything else. It's sort of religious dogma and fatalism that assumes that there are no other options in how we can start teaching a beginner. "Teaching the moves first is FUNDAMENTALLY WRONG," Aron Nimtzowitsch, in How I Became a Grandmaster article in 1929. 86 years later we are still not getting these words of one of the greatest thinkers in chess. Dr. Lasker, PhD in Math and Philosophy, another mountain of chess: "Education in chess and math is frightfully wastefull of time and values."

So what's wrong with the moves? They don't teach the true basics of chess: problem-finding and problem solving. Chess, and math, are about understanding STRUCTURES and spatial and functional RELATIONSHIPS between objects, that should lead to coming to CONCLUSIONS and, finally, finding SOLUTIONS (=MOVES). From this it is clear that moves are just the tip of an iceberg that cannot exist out of the context of the struggle on the board. A move is just the EXECUTION and final result of a mental proces that comes BEFORE it. Teaching the moves first promotes aimless wood pushing and is the main culprit for development of POOR chess board vision.

Chess, again, is not about moves, it is about how to use firing POWER pieces possess in space and time, and how pieces exchange that fire. Piece movements only serve power to be used more effectively by getting the opponent out of balance and creating weaknesses in their STRUCTURE as viable targets for your attack.

If chess is all about POWER and STRUCTURE, why don't we start teaching them first, instead of the moves? Why don't we start teaching with the basic elements of structure. And there are only FOUR elementary piece relationships that form structure, only four jobs pieces do in chess: to ATTACK, to RESTRICT, to PROTECT, and to BLOCK.

All that said, here is one possible way of how to start teaching:

1. Put Rook in the middle of the board. Explain to the student that Rook emanates invisible lines of power along the vertical and horizontal that go thru the square it is standing on.

2. Put an enemy piece in the Rook's line of fire. Explain that the Rook is now ATTACKING the enemy piece, and that that enemy piece is unsafe and UNDER ATTACK.

3. Put the same enemy piece on a square where it is not in the line of attack anymore.

4. Ask the student to ATTACK the enemy piece (as you see there was not any mention of how Rook actually MOVES on the board, good thing is it is along the very SAME lines of fire!).

5. The student will more likely than not make the right move instinctively. If not, show them.

So what is so DIFFERENT with this approach as compared with the tradiotional method of aimless pushing wood?

First, the student learned the basic piece RELATIONSHIP and element of STRUCTURE in chess: attacking connection, or contact, existing between the Rook and the enemy piece.

Secondly, the student got started with PURPOSE (=ATTACK the pawn!)

By understanding (a) the structure (that is, visualizing the line segment drawn between the Rook and the enemy pawn) and (b) purpose, the move came quite naturally and not entirely detached from the context of the chess battle as with the tradiotional teaching method!

That makes all the difference! And paves the way for excellent chess vision, not poor board vision like in this game I have observed between two boys who at the time had been in chess for a year:

1.e4 d5 2.Bd3 Bg4 3.exd5 Bxd1...

Better Chess Vision. A Manifesto

For a homework assignment you could watch the   masked chess boy  youtube video.

Your "boring" method is precisely how some of the best chess books start out.  (See, e.g., Seigbert Tarrasch, _The Game of Chess_).  It is precisely the best way to handle the problem you've identified:  teaching how to play chess from the initial position is overwhelming.  Simplify it.  Start with the King.  Add the Queen, and teach how to checkmate with King vs. King and Queen.  Then add the Rooks, with and without the Queens.  Teaching castling and the prinicpal endgame mates. For a 7 year old, once you add the bishops and knight, there's no need to teach every single endgame scenario (e.g., King, Bishop & Knight vs. King--way too hard), but at least the student is getting solid endgame training while learning how to play.  Once you get to the pawns, promoition and en passant are some of the last  pieces of the puzzle.

Once she knows how all the pieces move and all the quirky rules, and, more importantly, how to do basic endgame mates, then go on to the initial position and start off with King Pawn openings.  They tend to be easier.

And, 7, by the way, is the perfect age to start.