Starting Kids in Chess – Material: Plastic

Learning to play chess is one of the most rewarding things a child can discover.

Chess is fun and exciting, offering wonderful opportunities to grow a child's self respect and build valuable social skills. Encouraging kids to study the game of chess is a great move you can make as a parent. Kids that are mentally gifted as well as children with lesser abilities and those that struggle in school will all benefit from the challenging game.

Chess levels the playing field and allows every child an opportunity to succeed. With encouragement from parents and coaches, children will catch the spirit and eagerly embrace this game, desiring to excel and looking forward to chess competitions.

Chess will not only help a child in school, it will help them in life! As a child learns and studies chess, he or she will be exercising and creating disciplines of the mind while expanding mathematical and calculative abilities. The child will also be learning patience, planning, consequences, balance of time, resources and other essential life skills.

 

Chess is Fun!

Let's not forget though, chess is fun!! Kids have a blast playing their friends, siblings, and schoolmates. Experience your first chess tournament and you will see that chess teaches a lot, and is a great opportunity for children to socialize, compete, and challenge themselves.

 

How to Learn Chess

Some children love to read and are very easy to teach. You just hand them a book, and let them absorb it. In most cases however, kids are visual, have a short attention span, and need to be encouraged. It's best to select materials that are not overwhelming, that will be visually appealing, and at a suitable level - especially if you will be letting your child learn on their own.

If you have a quality teacher or chess coach in your area, you may want to take advantage of this, but there's every reason to learn at home, with the great tools available.

Get a basic, but good quality regulation plastic chess set. This will be useful whether you only play at home, or if you are part of a class or club.

Next, choose a combination of DVD instruction, books, and software as you see fit for your child's needs and learning style.

The Chess4life learning tools by Elliott Neff set up children for success at learning the game while sharpening life skills. Avoiding bad habits and often overlooked strategies is a key factor in improving rapidly.

For all ages and ideal for 6-14 years, kids learn in bite size visual segments in Elliott's clear, fun presentation. It's easy to follow from the most basic concepts onward ensuring that all key strategies are covered. Elliott's experience combined with an easy pace in friendly, clear English makes this series the best learning experience at home. Kids often watch them over and over.



Several workbooks available, help reinforce and enable further practice of the strategies. With a club style home chess set to practice, moving the pieces on the board while watching the DVDs multiplies the learning effect.

This tool has been developed, refined, and taught by National Master Elliott Neff over a period of 17+ years, producing multiple state and national individual and team chess champions.


Mom from Naperville, IL
Now that my son is of Chess playing age, I'm trying to remember the details of this game that I played 35 years ago. I previewed the video while doing my elliptical workout! Then, I thought "Would my 6 year old watch it?" We decided to watch one segment each night and then play. On the second night, he wanted to watch 2 segments. A few days later, we were playing a game and he mentioned his "pawn shield". I knew it was sinking in for him. Now we are going through Knight level and he joined the second grade Chess Club. It's fun because we are both learning. However, now that we KNOW more, the games are more challenging.


By Ms. O from Seattle
I showed this to my very beginners who were having trouble remembering the moves. There were a lot of ahas! Elliot is enthusiastic and repeats enough for every kid to get it.

 



By Alan G in Virginia
My 5 year old (Bradley) watched your Knight's Level Chess School DVD and loved it. Yesterday he watched the algebraic notation lesson and recorded all the moves from our next chess game on a home-made score sheet. He lost the game, but he won my heart. Today he used the score sheet he created from that game to re-create the entire game from start to finish. What can I say? Please let me know when more is available.
Thanks Elliott,


By Charles H. from Indiana

I'd been trying to increase my kids interest in chess (after I renewed my own interest from my younger days). Reading up on Elliot and his teaching, I thought this might help. Oh, yeah! We went through Pawn Level. When they were ready, we then went through Knight Level. And we started playing. A lot. The guys had more confidence and understanding. Also, they started reviewing on their own as different ideas came to them.

I enjoyed Elliot's presentation. And, more importantly, my kids liked him. He comes off as a nice, smart guy who wants to help you have fun as you learn to think better about chess. His conceptual breakdowns work well and progress smoothly.



By Alan G in Virginia
My 5 year old (Bradley) watched your Knight's Level Chess School DVD and loved it. Yesterday he watched the algebraic notation lesson and recorded all the moves from our next chess game on a home-made score sheet. He lost the game, but he won my heart. Today he used the score sheet he created from that game to re-create the entire game from start to finish. What can I say? Please let me know when more is available.
Thanks Elliott,


By Tim L in Renton, WA
They are absolutely fantastic! Both Johanna and Alysha were captivated through the first four lessions and wanted to keep going!! I didn't realize how little I actually knew either! Now we are all excited about getting out the chess boards again and trying all we learned, and the girls can't wait to watch lessons 5 through 10! [a few weeks later...] We just finished the last lession of pawn level and are excited to start the second DVD! The girls (Johanna & Alysha) Are loving the lessons and have gotten really excited about playing chess with me! Johanna even suggested watching the King topic a second time before we play again because she wanted to master the material! I can't believe how much I am learning just with the first DVD and I was even in chess club when I was younger! The way everything is presented is fun and easy to remember! Thanks again!


By Tom L from Virginia
I am using them in my chess class at the Providence Classical School. Over the years, I have spent a lot of money buying instructional DVDs/Tapes to augment my instructional program. Without reservation, Elliott's DVDs are the most understandable and the ones that my student relate to the best. My students are in grades 1 to 6.

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