Chess with My Son: 8 Steps to Beating Dad

photo by Jose Daniel Martinez (CC3.0)

My ten-year-old son beat me at chess today for the first time. Not to make excuses, but the sun was in my eyes, not to mention that annoying hangnail I've been nursing. Kidding aside, I knew the time would come; I just didn't think it would be so soon!

Here is how he learned to play chess and beat me. Some things I taught him, and some he learned on his own.

1. I first taught him how to set up the chess board and all the ways that pieces can move and take opposing pieces.


2. I talked him through our first several games as we played, telling him what I was doing and why. I also asked him to explain his moves to me, and I gave him feedback on his strategy.


3. When we first started playing, I allowed him to turn the board around at any point in the game (as long as he wasn't in check) and for us to finish the game playing each other's original pieces.


4. I started playing with just half of my pieces, then increased the number of pieces I used as he improved.


5. I let him take back moves if I hadn't yet touched a piece.


6. I never lost on purpose; I handicapped myself, but always played to win. This kept things fun for both of us.


7. Recently, he read this beginning chess book and did the exercises in it.


8. He played a chess game on my ipod touch on the way to Kyoto and back.

And today he beat me with both of us playing at full strength! I'm proud of him. Pretty soon he'll be spotting me pieces just to keep our games interesting.

Benefits of Sudoku

We're on a sudoku kick at the moment. I spent a couple hours today on a really tough one and messed it up twice. T, R, Tomomi and her parents are all in on the action. Besides being fun, addictive, and sometimes frustrating, sudoku helps development in the following areas.

• logic
• problem solving
• working memory
• concentration
• perseverance
• pattern recognition
• creativity
• confidence
• dealing with frustration

by jen_maiser

Of course it's important to start children out with easy puzzles so they don't get too frustrated right away and give up. You can model solving a puzzle and talk your way through it, but once your child has the basic concept, don't help too much. A big part of what makes sudoku fun is the satisfaction of completing a puzzle "all by myself!"

You can find easy printable sudoku puzzles beginning with 4x4 grids.

Here is a link to the more typical 9x9 sudoku grids with various levels of difficulty. 

If you'd rather work with words than numbers, there are lots of logic puzzles that are more like story problems. Here is a collection of 12 printable logic puzzles with grids.

My recent writing

I've been writing recently on a web platform called squidoo. I write there about things that don't necessary fit here or on facebook. If you'd like to check out what I've written, here are five of my recent (or recently updated pages).

How to Teach Basic Dictionary Skills has fun activities for parents and teachers to help their kids look up words quickly and learn how to spell them.

How to Teach Math with UNO introduces ways to teach math skills with the card game that we all have lying around somewhere. From simple same-different sorting skills, to skip-counting backwards and forwards, all the way to working with multiplication and division facts.

How to Talk So Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk is my review of the excellent parenting book of that name. I also include information about the authors inspiration, Haim Ginott, and a video of a parent explaining how she uses one of the tips from the book.

Keith Green: Christian Music Legend is my tribute to a hero of the faith. It contains a Keith Green discography, my Keith Green memories, and links to various Keith Green resources like articles he has written and videos of his music and sermons.

Baby's First Bible contains my Bible storybook recommendations for parents, godparents, or anyone else who is looking for a good bible for babies and toddlers.

I'd love to hear your comments!

Playing Competitive Games Cooperatively

The big news around here is that R graduated from kindergarten. Once our photos are a bit more organized, I'll post about that. For now though, I want to share a nice article from The Homeschool Classroom that I read about making board games more cooperative. The author uses Candyland, Sorry, Guess Who, and Scrabble as examples and suggests four ways of modifying the rules.

1. Each player helps all the tokens make their way around the board.
2. Pick a token to be the "bad guy" and everyone takes turn playing for the "bad guy" trying to make him come in last place. Cooperating this way takes deeper strategic thinking than playing the normal way.
3. Play against the clock instead of one another.
4. Play for fun--don't keep score.

Of course competition can be good fun and it is important to learn to win and lose graciously. However, life is more about cooperating for mutual good than just beating everyone else. Read the article for more explanation and ideas about how to make fun and cooperative "house rules" for games.