Chess is Child's Play: Teaching Techniques That Work (edition 2012)

I've been holding off on reviewing this book because I'd like to use it with my children (now 2 and 3). The entire setup behind its structure is interesting, but thus far, my kids have been too engaged by all the pieces coming out of the bag (and dropping them all over the house - did I mention they are 2 and 3?) to pull it back down to only doing a piece at a time.

One thing though: I'm an experienced amateur and my husband is a skilled (ranked) player, so much of the basic information is too simple. I do understand that people who don't know chess would like to teach their kids (and I won't really question their reasons) but I'd recommend you find another book for yourself first and teach your kids even with this book once you've a grasp of the game yourself.

This book is an easy read for parents. Sherman and Kilpatrick have partitioned subject matter of the game into sensible chapters. The book gracefully introduces play and concepts in a linear manner without compromising variety. I have not yet been able to test this on my son (a few years away from this), but it helps remind seasoned players on how to structurally approach the game to a complete beginner (an easily distracted one). One should not expect this book, chapter-after-chapter, as the literal guide to teaching a child. Parents and teachers should use this book to set up their frame of mind and recall the game from a simple introductory perspective.

Well structured and written guide for parents and teachers. ( )

I have two bright sons (two years apart) who both like chess, though the older has a better understanding of the game. I know nearly nothing of the rules myself, so this book was as much for my own education as that of the boys.

The book's lessons are clear, brief, and through. This makes them great for use by parents who don't know chess themselves, and for kids who need time to absorb one concept before moving on to the next. But for my fifth-grader -- and even the third-grader -- the lessons are a little too simple. They didn't want to stick to one thing, but instead wanted to play a full game.

They found the pacing frustrating, and ultimately abandoned the lessons in order to just play the game, looking things up online or in another book as they went along. I intend to keep the book as a reference for them and to try to teach myself. ( )

Good approach for the very young (early grade school), programmed instruction with plenty of exercises.

The book could benefit from further suggestions for older kids, e.g. middle school. The authors just recommend doing several lessons at a time at this age, but many are so basic that it is hard to hold an 11-12 year old's attention. ( )

I held off on reviewing this book because I wanted to fully test out the teaching methods described in the book. That said, I never made it through the whole book with my children.

By way of background, I am an enthusiastic amateur (emphasis on amateur) chess player. I play online regularly and enjoy playing games in person with friends. I wanted to try this book with my seven-year old daughter who has expressed an interest in chess but had not started playing the game.

Initially, the book was very helpful. It gave me a good way to discuss the game, the set-up of the board and the various pieces. Some of the early mini-games described in the book were also helpful in reinforcing how the pieces moved and attacked. The lessons were interesting enough that it drew my five-year old son's attention who also demanded to play chess with dad.

From there, the book grew a lot less useful. My children rapidly tired of the games. More importantly, their knowledge of the pieces grew so quickly that they leap-frogged over several parts of the book and had no interest in the drills. Ultimately, the chess app on my Iphone proved to be just as useful in teaching them the basics of movement.

Based upon my experience the book proved to be a good starting point but failed to hold my kids' interest. I am going back to the tried-and-true manner that I learned with - regular games with dad. ( )

I failed. I've been trying to get my son to play chess. We tried when he was 4, but it didn't take. He was more interested in battling with the horses around the room than following the rules of chess. I thought this book would help. It did for a short time. But it's hard for chess to compete with an iPad or Magic card games. I have not given up. I'm going to try again in a few months. For now, the game will have to wait. ( )

I was excited to recieve this book and anxious to try it out with my grandchild. In the meantime, I lent it to a friend to "try" with her 5 yo and 3 yo children. She had only the very basic idea of chess and hoped she could learn along with the kids. The 3 yo was not interested at all, and the 5 yo was confused. The mom, found the book hard to understand and felt it would work better with an adult more experienced in the game than she. I am still looking forward to sharing this book with my grandchild, but could be a while.... I am going to reserve my judgement until my personal attempts have been accomplished, but felt it necessary to give a review of some kind until that happens. ( )

I'm working with the book and my middle-school son, so much of the initial sections are overly simple for us. However, the break-down of the game into mini-games is quite helpful, and we're both learning chess together. I would like an index to help find specifics when they come up in a game and we've forgotten where we read about that.

Otherwise, a fine approach to teaching chess or learning chess with your child. ( )

Chess Is Child's Play is a manual for adults on teaching chess to children. There are twenty-six chapters dedicated to instruction, arranged in a progressive topical sequence, so twice-weekly classes could cover the entire curriculum in a quarter. The authors have absolutely minimal expectations of the children and adults involved. The adult teacher need never have played chess before. The children may be pre-literate and new to board games. The teacher may be new to the teaching process. (There is a reiterated emphasis at the beginning that the teacher needs to read the book through before attempting to offer the lessons, which I thought would go without saying, but ... there you go.) There are also some remarks apparently intended for adults familiar with chess, for whom the challenges faced in learning the game are so remote that they easily lose sight of them.

I wish that I had known some of these techniques when I first taught my daughter to play, and I will be using some of them to review with her, and try to renew her enthusiasm for the game. The authors are very careful to structure lessons in ways that avoid discouragement and frame learning as fun. Exercises and drills are called "mini-games." The entire course brings the student very incrementally to the point of full working knowledge of the rules of play, and nothing more. The object is to have children be able to play and enjoy the game, not to make them formidable at it.

Some failings: Although the table of contents is sufficient for most purposes, I would have liked an index. An introduction to chess notation for teachers and students would have been an important addition at the end. Also, a glossary would also have been consistent with the aims and methods of the book. The authors deliberately keep the language simple to cater to younger players, so "block" always serves for what an experienced adult would call "interposition," for example. Although the authors rightly say, "your child will continue to learn simply by playing" (302), it still makes sense to give new players explicit access to the vast range of chess literature, as well as to the argot that is used to analyze and discuss games in communication among players.

Materially, this book is a glossy textbook hardcover with text in a generous font and large-sized game diagrams throughout. Instruction is punctuated by relevant (if sometimes banal or saccharine) anecdotes about children learning the game, along with little maxims and atomized advice from the authors. It retails for under $20, which makes it a steal in my opinion. I would recommend it to anyone undertaking the exciting challenge of teaching chess to children. ( )

My husband has been using this book to teach our 5-year-old son how to play chess. Within a couple of weeks they were playing full games together and having a great time. The authors do a really nice job of breaking the game down into small chunks to keep kids interested.

Chess Is Child's Play is a guide for parents who wish to teach their very young children how to play chess. It is targeted at parents of 3-year-olds, but it makes allowances for older children, too. There is much to praise and some to criticize, so I'll start with the praise. The beginning, once described to value of chess, offers a lot of very good advice on teaching anything to children this young. One must adopt a very different attitude and have a very different set of expectations of small children. Things that seem so obvious to us or to older children are conceptual hurdles for three-year-olds, and the book offers good advice on how to help the child over these hurdles. The most important lesson for parents is that learning must be fun. When it stops being fun, it becomes a chore that children resent with rapidly growing intensity. So the lesson must stop at the first signs of boredom. As Suzuki said, “when the child yawns, the lesson is over.” And this can be frustrating to the parent who wants to share his or her excitement about the game for hours on end. Five minutes per lesson is usually the best one can expect at the beginning. The idea is to move away from the mindset of getting the child to play chess and toward that of getting the child to love chess. It is a game, and a very fun game, but it's hard. And we often forget the fun part of it when we become obsessed with the hard part.

I've taught chess in an after-school program for six years, and I am impressed with the authors' pedagogical organization. They are very systematic, and very thorough. They cover just about every error or misunderstanding that I've ever seen a child make in trying to learn the game, and they give good advice on how to deal with these issues when they arise. I especially like how they break up certain concepts into separate lessons, and how they indicate the optimal points at which to draw connections with previous lessons. One of the best features of the book is the huge collection of mini-games to get the child to play on the path to playing the full game. I have used this technique, too, but I had nothing like the arsenal of games the authors bring with them. A mini-game is a game played with very few pieces, to give the child familiarity with exactly one concept. A game might give the student practice with placing a piece in the middle of its square, for example, or with the proper way to capture a piece (pieces are not croquet balls, the authors point out). The mini-games increase in complexity as the book proceeds.

The most striking and annoying feature about this book is that it contains no paragraph longer than four sentences. It is clearly written for people who can't entertain a complex thought, and who are unable to hold on to an idea long enough to develop it fully. Its audience, in short, are parents born after 1985 who have been deprived by their education of the ability to read a real book. So, this isn't a real book. It is a collection of aphorisms: chess by fortune cookies. Reading through the choppy text, I couldn't help wondering if there is a big market for books written for parents with ADD who want to teach their children how to concentrate uninterruptedly for eight hours?

Another annoying feature, or lack thereof, is that the book has no index. Admittedly, the table of contents can handle most questions, but, still, if you wanted to put your finger quickly on the place where pawn promotion is introduced, that would be impossible.

Despite these last criticisms, I would say this book is a valuable resource for parents who want to try introducing their children to chess. Anyone who wants to try should read and reread the advice on teaching in general before beginning, because it is very hard to break oneself of the habit of chastising and shaming children for their natural mistakes. And that technique is the quickest and surest way to keep the game from ever being fun. ( )

Sherman and Kilpatrick have put together a serviceable primer for adults with little-to-no familiarity with chess who want to teach their children to play. Although their approach to the game's instruction is logical and well thought-out, the book itself is poorly written and laid-out (the look of the pages reminded me of early Mac manuals), making it much harder for the authors' message to be delivered. The language of the book is awkward throughout and condescending at times, and the pages are cluttered by asides which add nothing to the content. If you can wade through the distractions and overlook the tone, though, the authors put forth some excellent advice. ( )

This is a great book that explains how to teach your children how to play chess. While I do not have children of my own, my sisters in law do. We have been teaching them how to play chess! They have always been fascinated by the plastic chess set at their grandmother's house and my wooden chessmen. They are excited to learn and this book breaks things down nicely. As a testament my sister in law never learned to play chess so she learned quite a lot from the book as well. If you have children I highly recommend this book! You will gain lots of fun family nights away from the TV! ( )

Chess is Child's Play takes a simple and methodical approach to teaching how kids to play chess. It begins with each piece's movements, then covers check/checkmate, advanced moves like castling, then game strategy. The early chapters were too basic for my 5 year-old, but the rest were relevant and insightful. There were plenty of side notes and diagrams and I love that it came in hardcover. It feels like a textbook and I expect it will stand up to plenty of abuse that it's sure to get from my two younger kids.

The only negative was the dry writing. It could have used more color. I realize chess doesn't lend itself to excitement and vigor, but a little humor and levity can go a long way. ( )

This book is a unique coaching tool for developing a chess club for youngsters. It begins with a set of rationales to pursue the game as a way to instill self-confidence in young minds. The earlier kids are exposed to the rules of the game, the easier they will discover the joys of skill building. As the authors indicate, this pursuit can then translate into positive behavior later to impact their lives productively. The book is laid out similar to "Chess for Dummies," but perhaps in a less condescending manner. One can stop to interject a helpful hint as mentioned in "Coffee Talk" pit stops. The race to get kids to understand chess can be arduous, but this manual can bolster the confidence not only of kids, but coaches as well who can get increasingly frustrated when rules need to be reinforced in early learners. Also for parents who want to enjoy seeing their child excel in the game, this guidebook is a shrewd starting point. ( )

An excellent book for teaching children of any age how to play chess. You may even adapt it to teach adults. Don’t know how to play chess? Use this book to teach yourself. Each chapter of the book is a clearly explained lesson. The illustrations are crisp and the pages have plenty of white space, which makes it easy to follow the instructions. The lessons make learning chess fun. You follow the learner’s pace. Each chapter ends with tips on how to deal with problems learners may have with the lesson. With this book in hand, adults can approach teaching children chess with confidence. ( )

I think when reviewing a book like this, it is imperative that the reader understand the skill level of the reviewer. I am a moderately good chess player, having played in one tournament and doing well in it. I've played chess for years. I would mention my USCF rating, but I don't remember it and it was provisional having only played in the one tournament.

With that out of the way, I will say this is a very good book for teaching children to play chess. I taught my oldest boy, now 9, how to play a few years ago, and it was a bit of a struggle for me. I started using this book to teach my other three children how to play (ages 7, 7, and 6). The exercises and structure of this book work very well. They are really picking it up and grasp the concepts quite quickly using the mini games. I really like the mini game approach as it gives the child a sense of accomplishment quickly.

I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to teach a child to play chess. Even someone without much chess knowledge could get their child started using this book, although it is always helpful to have some knowledge of the game when the invariable questions come. ( )

Chess is Child's Play: Teaching Techniques That Work by Laura Sherman and Bill Kilpatrick is not written for children. It is written for parents to help their children learn a valuable skill: playing chess well. Playing chess well does more than build confidence in competitive situations, as the authors point out: it also enhances a child's ability to solve problems, to plan strategically, to think creatively to achieve goals, to win and lose in a graceful, sportsmanship manner, to develop long-term concentration (most kids have short attention spans these days), to achieve difficult goals, and to understand teamwork through understanding how to use the special skills or limitations of each type of piece to achieve specific goals.

The book is designed to maximize learning and fun for different ages. Parents are taught how to engage and assist children as young as one and as well as children age eight and above. Each stage of a child's development is addressed because learning chess should not be an exercise in tedium, but rather a stimulating and enjoyable experience. The advice to parents also serves to give them insights into how a child's mind and manual dexterity change and to interact with those changes in a way that enhances the child's confidence and intellect.

There are clear, simple diagrams, clear and specific instructions – even suggestions on how to explain the various chess pieces and moves. You never feel at a loss to discuss or demonstrate key points in the game. The authors have worked hard to ensure that you, the parent, also grow in confidence. Working with your child, following the advice in this book, can easily bring you both closer together.

There are special insets throughout called “Coach's Corner,” which help you through the more difficult concepts and remind you not only when to have extra patience with your kids, but also provide you with insights into challenges other parents have encountered with that particular lesson. You will also discover Troubleshooting Tips that identify a problem, then offer solutions.

The book begins with chapters that help you help your child become comfortable with the fundamentals: pieces, the board, and the rules. Then each chess piece is given a chapter before you even approach the setting up a game. You will learn how to help your child understand concepts of offense and defense and stalemate. These concepts are important life attitudes. Knowing how to react in difficult, but crucial situations, is an essential life skill. Chess can develop and hone these attitudes and skills.

I have another excellent book on chess for children in my personal library (Gary's Adventures in Chess Country by Igor Sukhin ), but fully appreciate and recommend this book as well because it has been designed for parents to help children. It engages and promotes a solid family interaction that can last a lifetime. I thank Library Thing and the authors for the opportunity to review and benefit from this book. My child is an adult now, but should I be graced with grandchildren, I hope chess will be a part of my interaction with them. At least now, I have a book designed specifically for me to help them. Both books are complementary and supportive. I highly recommend them both. ( )

Laura Sherman is a self-professed chess coach and writing coach. She claims to once have been rated but the USCF does not list her. Bill Kilpatrick is a self-professed educational entrepreneur. Mr. Kilpatrick once was an expert rated chess player in California over a decade ago. These are not the most auspicious qualifications for writing a book about how to teach children chess. Yet, for the uninitiated adult who wants to teach the game to the uninitiated child, Chess is Child’s Play is a serviceable primer.

Written for the adult teacher rather than the child, the book spends some time in the beginning stressing why chess can be a benefit to a child’s intellectual development. For this reason the book may not appeal to chess purists who may believe the game recommends itself. Moreover, it seems to imply that chess ability has a direct correlation to other intellectual abilities.

I commend readers to varied studies that can be found on the Internet regarding the translation of chess talent to other disciplines. There is plenty of evidence to suggest chess does not translate to general intellectual prowess as the world’s grandmasters of chess often do not display extraordinary abilities in other fields. Many aspects of life do not yield to the abstractions of a board game. Indeed, the demands of great chess often rob the chess genius of development in a host of other areas that enrich life and provide other avenues for expertise and success. As a corollary the chess world is replete with young prodigies who ditch chess at just the time (college) when the world may provide more fruitful pursuits.

By pointing this out I do not intend to disparage the heroic effort expended by the individual who becomes a chess champion. I, too, share in the awe of such persons.

And in all fairness and candor it may be the authors’ unstated thesis that they agree with the above as they do not make claims for creating chess genius but rather that learning chess can make one better.

The greatest strength of the book is its recognition that children learning chess often focus on a number of things unrelated to the game. Sherman and Kilpatrick address these events while organizing the lessons in manageable portions, which make it simpler for the teacher and student. They deal with problems that seem to be born of experience. Sometimes what is taught is not chess at all but rather concepts indispensible to chess such as answering the question, “What is a diagonal?” These spatial abstractions sometimes are transparent to the older student but may baffle a child at first.

All in all, Chess is Child’s Play is a useful introduction to the family that has no familiarity with chess and does not even know how to begin. ( )

This book offers plenty of great instruction options in an easy to digest layout. It presents a lot of kid friendly instructions and fun ways to learn chess. There are many diagrams and sub-sections to allow for engaging repetition to get a lesson across. Because the authors include so many particulars on all of the finer points of chess etiquette (like how to hold the piece, etc), I admit to learning quite a bit myself! ( )

This is a well-done textbook for teaching chess to a variety of age groups. Even 2-4 year olds get a section of tips to make them interested in the game, as well as older children. Each piece's unique rules and movements get their own section and diagrams.

It's designed to be read and understood by a parent or educator prior to using it with children: it's not really intended to hand over to a child to teach themselves, nor is it meant to teach by pointing at pictures. The many diagrams included are intended to be demonstrated on a real chessboard rather than teaching by pictures---I really thought that was a good point, because tangibly feeling the pieces and seeing how they move in real life is much better than some chessbooks that expect you to follow the pictures.

There are several mini-games to set up to quiz your child with on a real board to make sure they understand legal moves and positions.

Another positive is that it is not teaching through bullying or insisting that chess will make your student or child become a better student. I've seen too many chess books use that as motivation, pushing the hope future possible geniuses rather than love for an interesting game. Thus, rather than becoming homework or even punishment, this book makes it fun. It encourages family time, parents playing chess while their children observe, and making the entire experience fun.

This is also a very sturdy, library quality edition that will last through endless sessions of use...seriously, it's built like an elementary school textbook--high quality and strong. ( )