Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The Inventor of Trophies was a Genius

At the last chess class Richie got the idea that he had "won enough games" to get a "Piston Cup"*. Here's an interesting dilemma, do you tell a 4 y.o. that he can't have a trophy until he wins it in competition? Or do you allow the chess teacher to award him with a trophy for participation or some minor milestone?

Well actually his chess teacher decided for us by offering him a trophy based on his progress so far, so Richie (and Alyssa) were thrilled. They got to choose the colors of their trophies and displayed them proudly in our house.

In chess they have started working on 2-move checkmates. Michael introduced the problem by noting that they had already solved some before (Alyssa protested that they would be too hard), and then worked backwards from a 1 move mate to a position where the 1 move mate would be forced after a simple check on the king. They also learned how to notate the moves. Alyssa took particular interest in this part, and later on was attempting to write down moves of a game between me and Richie.

They got homework of 6 chess problems to solve. We'll have to do them on the board together as they don't have as much interest in solving the puzzles from looking at them as a diagram.

* My son loves all things related to the Disney movie, Cars, and naturally thinks all trophies are "Piston Cups" which is the what the top racing prize is called in that story.

No comments:

Wider Two Column Modification courtesy of The Blogger Guide