I just had a thought-- of maybe finding a way to decorate or paint the cheap plastic pieces and red and black squared cardboard board I will give to each girl. Couldn’t resist when I saw them at the store for …ONE dollar each.
I do hope to start an actual chess club in their school in a couple of years when time permits but for now I am scheduled to guide them at a brownie(girl scout) meeting so I thought I should wet their appetite for chess. :mrgreen:
One thing I tried to do was get my students to draw and decorate the patterns the pieces make when they move.
For example, on a piece of paper or posterboard they would place bishops side by side and then chess squares would radiate out from there that showed how they moved. Knights two squares apart would make a nice pattern, and rooks placed one square away diagonally could be interesting. Only the squares that would be covered by a piece’s moves would be shown, not the whole chess board, although a chess board might have to be penciled in first, or a template used, and then removed. If a chess board is drawn, once the squares covered by the pieces have been identified, the rest of the chess board would be cut away. In any case, only the sqaures the pieces cover would be left.
unfortunately, I never got to finish this project so I don’t know how it would have turned out! If you do it, let me know, please!
How about getting some of the Chessmen cookie and decorating them by dampening the chess pieces slightly and dipping them in colored sugar?
You may even be able to get the miniature versions of those cookies. I’ve seen them as part of boxes sets of cookies, I’m not sure if I’ve seen them for sale by themselves.
I give my daughter chess cookies all the time and I never thought of bringing some in for the girls to snack on! Decorating them will certainly add to their allure.
Thanks Nolan
Thank you Radishes for a very creative suggestion. I am definetly going to use some variation of that after some experimenation with crayons and/or scissors.
It would be nice if you could incorporate some ‘pre-chess’ skills.
Here are two games I’ve used with 2nd graders:
Kings: Both players get a king in their proper starting positions. They’re taught how kings move with emphasis on the fact that kings can never be next to each other. The first player to get a king to the other edge of the board wins. Some players will figure out opposition, which they often think is rather funny.
Pawns: Both players get 8 pawns and are taught how pawns move and capture. The first player to get a pawn to the other edge of the board wins. (I usually don’t teach them about en passant right away.)
Both of these games are short enough that you can teach one of them quickly and have them play it several times in an hour.
If there are any exceptionally bright students, teach them how queens move and have them try the 8 queens puzzle. When I’ve used this at the 3rd grade level, it seems to me that the girls tend to reason out a valid solution faster than the boys do.
I just had a thought-- of maybe finding a way to decorate or paint the cheap plastic pieces and red and black squared cardboard board I will give to each girl. Couldn’t resist when I saw them at the store for …ONE dollar each. 
