Have you ever taught chess to kids?

Yeah... it's a rock and a hard place... Go easy on her and she doesn't like that... play at normal level and I beat win so fast it can't be good for her confidence in her playing :-\

I've tried to take the middle road with generally letting her play as will, and when she does a really poor move helping her think through it and finding a better one.

She's gonna be in Russia for a semester, so I figure chess skills are a must :)

I have already thought some kids before but I think they get me as my english is bad. LOL

I am currently teaching my 6 year old boy... he is catching on real quick and loves the game... we play daily now and I allow him "take backs" in the spirit of learning.

I've concluded I'm a better teacher than player ..he will be quite a force when he starts to develope a strategy and learns various scenerios.

I think that would very beneficial to do what Erik did by teaching kids in school how to play chess.  The formidable years is perfect for chess.  I have not taught any kids to play chess, mostly in part because the situation has never arose where a kid wanted to play. 

Define kid

Hello,

I tought my son when he was about 8 or 9.

I am now 62 and he is 38.

I never let him win and I now feel sorry I didn't because now I have 2 little grandsons 4 and 2 and today I I would let them win to give them assurance (my wife is a nurse giving pre natal courses and this is her advice).

Nevertheless, at the age of 14 or 15, my son started to win against me and controled the  games fully.

He hadn't played in over 15 years and last month we played and I had the upper hand for awhile but he beat me just the same.

He made me proud but I still think I should have let him win when he was little.

What my dad did when I was really little was about half way into the game, if I wanted to, I could have him turn the board around on him!

I think it worked quite well in retrospect, as it allowed me to simply make my mistakes and see what I was doing wrong, but still let me win most of the time :)

I could beat him squarely after not too long though so it wasn't really needed after a while.

Anybody heard of the Canadian program Chess in the library? I've been teaching there for a while and it's pretty awesome seeing kids who've never seen a chess board become intrigued with the game. Does anybody have any advice for teaching kids 6-11 y/o chess if they don't really want to learn and just play video games all day? In other words how to get their attention?

You can't force them to do something they don't want to do. Some will be fascinated and some never will. I read once about a chess teacher who asked kids on the first lesson if they chose to be there or if their parents sent them. If the kids didn't want to be there he refused to give them more lessons.

ok, then I'm in trouble because I'm pretty sure none of my students actually want to play chess :)

 Have you tryed using a grahic fantasy program, like where the pieces move like action figures? It might lessen the anxiety.

Like batman vs. spiderman? Now there's an interesting idea