AGES 5-6
KINDERGARTEN CHESS CLASS!
DEVELOPMENTALLY TARGETTED
Chess Nuts is a chess-song singing, laughing, chess-tourney, dancing, chess clock-slapping, zany chess video, puppet show introduction to chess and being the smart kid in class. Only for kids ages 5-6, Chess Nuts comes one day per week into your Elementary School and puts on a high-energy one hour chess practice.
ACADEMIC CONFIDENCE
Kids report Chess Nuts to be the favorite part of their week because kids love our developmentally-targeted, infectiously-fun thinking activities and find them compelling, exhilarating, and extremely gratifying. Your school is invited to affiliate with us as we--at this crucial and developmentally formative preschool stage--delightfully impart to every one of our Chess Nuts a self-identity as a very smart person!
Kindergarten parents ask us all the time whether chess lessons for kids are really appropriate for kids so young. They worry that their child is too young for chess, that the child will be confused. The answer from the chess coaches of The Knight School is a categorical: “not at all!” The Knight School operates a thriving preschool chess class, so kindergarten chess is definitely developmentally appropriate. Chess is like learning a foreign language: the younger the better. Laying down the mental pathways of cause and effect and creativity and goal-orientation are crucial in these formative years. Can you spot the kindergarten Chess Nut in this picture?
The Knight School, while seeking opponents for chess matches out in the community, have many times encountered schools who, believe it or not, do not allow anyone to join their chess club until fifth grade! I must confess that when I do encounter these schools, I always challenge them and I bring only my kindergartners and first and second graders and it is quite the spectacle. Did you know that The Knight School is a chess kids academy that has a secret hand signal that our coaches can give, which commands our kids to lose a chess game on purpose? Not kidding. We use this hand signal—which we call the “tearjerker” —in all our programs, from our interactive online chess camp to our preschool chess class. The tearjerker was put into rotation because The Knight School so often beat our opponents 20-0, and this is not a friendly way to treat a chess team who invited you to drive across town to come play a friendly chess match. Good sportsmanship is our highest priority, followed by fun, then chess talent third. All my chess team members agree, though, that no matter how young we are or how old they are, smearing our opponents is not appropriate, so the hand signal was established.
During class, when not on a trip to play our crosstown rivals, our Chess Nuts kindergartners wear the snazzy orange shirt in class because no doubt about it, orange is one of the most stylish of TKS colors. Behold.
There is, however, a more utilitarian purpose for the shirt color as well. It marks the child as very young and in need of softer treatment, gentle training, and sometimes a little mercy as they get on their feet in chess class against what can be some very formidable, veteran, purple-shirt-wearing chess destroyers, all of whom once, back in the day, wore the orange shirt as well! The Knight School delicate process of at times mixing kindergartners in with bigger kids, and at other times separating them, is akin to placing a goldfish in a fishbowl, but leaving the Ziplock sealed for a day. It makes everyone happy! Please join us in our Chess Nuts Kindergarten Chess Program and feel the thrill of the orange-shirters as they begin to eagerly climb the monkey bars of an amazing kindergarten learning curve!