I am just curious if anyone is teaching chess at a young age as part of an early learning curriculum?
Or did anyone who learnt chess as a child excel at academically?
I have taught 2 sisters to read and more both by the age of 3. The older sister was average developmentally in all areas and she learnt reading best by a word family method. She is a very brilliant middle school student accepted to a GATE magnet school.
The younger sister was the most brilliant tot I have seen. Walking and climbing out of her crib at 9 months, singing ABCs, counting to 20 (skipping 15) at a little over a year. You get the gist. She now is repeating 5th grade because academically she is faltering. She never got challenged and pushed in school and I believe she was bored a lot of the time.
Other than being very different thinkers another difference in the 2 girls is that the older one was taught chess at about 3-4 and loved it and continued to play through school. I was wondering if Chess really does help build the brain they way Polgar believed.
I don’t know anything about the research on the academic benefits of chess, but it is a fun game and certainly it helps one to think in a rule-governed way, which seems like excellent preparation for math and other formal thinking. So with H. I began showing him the pieces when he was two, and we got “No Stress Chess” when he was three or so. In this way he learned how to set up the board. In the last few years we’ve played a game a week or so, and I explain things of course as we play. Lately we’ve been reading a couple of intro chess books for kids–he wouldn’t have been able to get through them until recently, I’m sure. Also, we do chess tutorial software, which H. tolerates (he doesn’t love it, but he doesn’t resist either).
Of course, you have to remember that the chess club players are pretty much the lowest on the social totem pole especially in high school, so if you want to get into chess, you can’t really care much about that. Fortunately for us, we don’t. :biggrin:
I have been to a few chess tournaments in my time. They are very intense. If James wants to play I have no qualms against teaching him.
Social poles are completely irrelevant to me. In highschool I was considered weird by the weird kids… The dungeons and dragos roll playing goths, witches, sci fi/fantasy types. I played violin was in choir, was a jockette, book nerd and a math wizz. My husband is an Uber geek. So anyway I look at it my sons genetic makeup has him doomed.