Advice on teaching 8 year olds king and queen vs king?

having a hell of a hard time teaching novice kids to do this...they keep stalemating and repeating moves and checking instead of cutting off the king, and even hanging their queen, and after this I have to teach them king and rook against king....

any suggestions would be apreciated 

Have you tried the 'making the box smaller' method?

thats for a rook, for the queen is the 'make an L method'...know what I'm talking about?

where you copy all his moves

It works just as well for the queen.

Thats the method I just referenced, make an L, it is not working

Then use the box method, it's simpler.

Plus if they've learned mate with rook that's 2 endings for the price of 1.

But I cant teach them rook now, this is what will happen

Have you tried 2 rooks?

hmmm

I suspect this

yes but they do it anyway

I suspect "patzer see a check, patzer give a check" is going on

I had the same problem - now, they don't succeed every time, but at least more often. The exercise needs to be done regularly I believe.

They kept using the queen (or rook) as you show, so I just kept telling them to move their king - and they finally got the message. Explaining the theory, and making them understand the principle just isn't enough - they need the hammering of some basic advice like that. "You got 2 pieces, use both! Use the king! Use the king!"

Try asking them to visualize a 3 square bar in front  of the king, and to use that bar to push the king to a side of the board. The really difficult bit is to have them finally get the kings face to face - and trigger the mate!

The really difficult bit is to have them finally get the kings face to face - and trigger the mate!

They just need to know to cut the file off.

It is about creating a box, that's certainly not just for rooks.

I never think 'be a knights distance away', that is what I do but I think that advice is just complicating it and bringing in a degree of calculation rather than just natural moves. I just cut off squares with the queen until I can't and then bring the king over until the kings are facing or almost facing, cut off a file as in the diagram and drop the queen.

How was your method easier?

Mine is basically the same, except you didn't describe how to actually get into a mating position.

All I said was that you don't have to say 'get a knights move away', that just happens naturally if you cut off the king with the queen.

Yeah fair enough, that looks good.

Good stuff indeed

Wait a couple more years?

You son obviously has other interests. 

My brother who is 6 knows how to checkmate with a just a queen.

P.S I'm 11 and I explained how to do it.