Gifted Homeschooling » games

Resources for Teaching Chess

Jon — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:04:19 +0000

Teaching chess to a home school student can be a challenge. Most parents can teach the moves and maybe a bit of strategy, but then it falls apart. Local chess clubs, co-op chess classes, and private chess coaching are the usual route to continue learning chess. But with some good resources, parents can teach solid chess (and maybe even learn it themselves).

Most chess books are aimed at the experienced player. Even the childish-looking How to Beat Your Dad at Chess is beyond beginning players. I’ve found three books that are excellent for teaching younger players: Chess for Children, Better Chess for Young Players, and Batsford Chess Course. The Chess For Dummies and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess are also decent comprehensive books. Books by Susan Polgar, a female grandmaster, would be excellent for girls.

There are many excellent chess websites that offer articles, puzzles, and ways to play real opponents. One exceptional one for learning is ChessTempo, which dynamically rates players and puzzles so the player is offered puzzles at the appropriate difficulty. A bonus for kids is that you can see your score rise (or fall) as you work, so they continually get feedback on their efforts and can stay motivated to beat the scores of friends and family.

A great free chess tool is Winboard (and the bundled Crafty chess “engine”). Whenever you can’t understand where a game went wrong, playing through the game with analysis turned on is a tremendous help.

Blink card game

Jon — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 02:04:22 +0000

Last year I blogged about the card game Blink. It’s been an awesome game to play with both of our kids (8 and 4). There’s no reading required, so the 4 year old plays fine. I just deal him a somewhat smaller pile until he legitimately wins his fair share of games. We’ve gotten a lot of set theory / matching exercise out of a little $5 card game that’s sold in every Walmart and Target.

Planarity Insanity

Ann — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:56:09 +0000

Do you get excited when your yo-yo gets tangled? Does your heart leap at the opportunity to rewind a gnarly skein of yarn? Planarity by John Tantalo just might be your dream come true! This incredible game is a great supplement to the study of planar graphs. The object of the game is to “untangle” the nonplanar graph by clicking and dragging the vertices around the playing area.The example here is the opening of a level 15 nonplanar graph. My husband and I are very competitive with this game. We have both gone far into the 20s, and probably will not continue because time is a real factor when you get to the really difficult levels. When you check this out, post a comment with your top level and time! Enjoy!

The Fantastic Contraption

Ann — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 05:11:09 +0000

One of our family’s favorite pastimes is solving puzzles and Fantastic Contraption captivated us from the beginning.

The goal of the game is to move a given object into the goal, a designated box. The object starts in a workspace where you build your contraption.

There are just so many different possible solutions that we’ve had great fun comparing ours. It is very important not to look ahead. After you’ve solved a puzzle, you will have the opportunity to view many different solutions from other users and rate them! This is much less frustrating than working the problems, and has proven to be quite humbling.

This is a great experiential site if you’ve been working with building Lego machines and although this is a completely 2-D activity, much can be learned about the gears, force, gravity, tension, friction, structure, and creative problem solving.

This game is addictive. Consider yourself warned.

http://www.addictinggames.com/fantasticcontraption.html