I just taught my 6 year old niece to play chess…
My family kept saying… “I don’t know, she’s still pretty young.” I said, “Don’t worry, she’ll understand what she understands and we won’t go any faster than that”. We played for over 4 hours! I thought “Should I bring out the standard vertical teaching board for just one student?” but I did – because that’s what we do – and I gave her the full works. And she loved it!
She loved the big teaching board so much she even wanted to know about the letters and numbers on the side. So I taught her the algebraic notation and then wanted Heather and I play a game with each other on the Demo board and insisted that we call our moves out loud using the algebraic system so that she could move the pieces on the demo board for us. She likes to play “teacher”.
So, you’re <em>never</em> too young to learn Chess! Now I’m teaching the rest of the family so they can keep up! LOL.”
