Saturday night is movie night date night. Usually, we would settle for any action, mystery, documentary (like The Social Dilemma), or comedy. Pretty much just any movie in those genres that is available on Netflix. For the last few weeks, we've been watching Queen's Gambit. I kinda regret inviting him to watch the series because now, I am obliged to wait for him to watch with me. I usually binge watch Netflix series like these.
We only watch during the weekends because my husband values proper sleep. During weekdays, he's been playing chess on his phone. Naturally, the little kiddo got curious. And we both know that when the kiddo has a WH question, those will need to be answered.
Enter the Chessboard
And so, he pulled out our old chessboard, collecting dust under the bed, abandoned and ignored for years. It was gifted to us on our wedding day since we both play chess before. He's better at me though because he's been on tournaments. As for me, I just like the sound of the chess pieces clashing against each other especially when savoring that sweet sweet victorious feeling when I'm taking out an important piece from my opponent.
My father would have gutted me alive if he heard me talk about chess that way. It was one of his passions during his youth. I used to use chess as an excuse to stay up late. I used to tell him I'm studying our last game and that I'll sleep in a few minutes. None of those two statements were true. If my husband had met my father during his prime, he wouldn't stand a chance. Or maybe he would but our love story would have been a little different.
Familiarization/Introduction
So there I was just watching my daughter and my husband set up the board, both excited, not sure though if they're excited about the same thing. Once my husband has set up the pieces in their places, he told my daughter, "I'll play white, you'll play black." To which my daughter replied, "Where's the white?" And so there he was again, so clueless that he's about to witness our daughter's wit, explaining about the white and black chess pieces and that white moves first, yadda yadda yadda. My daughter just said "These are not white, they're brown. They should be called BROWN."
I just knew something like this would come up so I managed to stifle my laughter. The husband though, was a bit speechless for a few moments, unsure if he's gonna laugh or proceed to explain why the color doesn't match the pieces.
She learned about each piece, what they're for, how they move, and where they're placed. All just a general introduction, nothing too serious at all. That was Day 1.
Position/Placement
On the second day, I was surprised because the first thing my daughter told me as soon as she woke up was that she wanted to play chest. In my sleepy voice, all I could manage to say was CHESS (to correct her pronunciation) and ALRIGHT (hoping she would give me a few more seconds to go back to lalaland).
Well, I wanted a child-led learning process. Child-led learning it is! Her father is on his computer, working so I had to substitute the chess lessons that morning. I let her set up the pieces. And to my surprise, once again, she was able to set up the pieces correctly. Well, except for one bishop and one knight which she said she wanted to be in front of the babies (the pawns) because they're smaller than all the other pawns. How cute is that?
I am really amazed at how she learned all these things (plus the compassion for the smaller pawns) in just 2 days. I myself still get confused about where I should place the queen and the king. Til now.
Movements
On Day 3, we focused on the movements. She somehow has an idea of how each piece moves from all the game we had from the previous days. Those are not serious games though. We always let her win. I was against this at first. My father never showed mercy to me when he played chess with me before. My husband's rationale though was that he did not want to discourage the little kid from playing. He knows how competitive our little one could get and he sees how she gets upset when she loses in kiddie games.
There was actually a science about this. Just recently, we discovered another educational series on Netflix: Brainchild. It is packed with a lot of trivia, scientific experiments that are fun to do and participate in, and as it turns out, so easy to understand and remember - even for a 4-year-old. Their episode about Motivation (Season 1, Episode 7) explained how the feeling of winning releases more dopamine giving you a happy feeling, increasing your motivation.
This actually explained to me why I needed to always acknowledge when the kids I'm teaching were able to read the words or letters correctly, or if they were able to answer even the simplest math problems right. They feel more motivated when they see they are doing great.
Now we are just randomly playing chess at home. Our old boring board game is now always near where we can easily get it. Because as of right now, this is one of her toys along with the building blocks, paint and paintbrush, markers, crayons, and colored chalks. We haven't finished the Queen's Gambit yet but I"m glad we stumbled upon it because now, we might have an Elizabeth Harmon in the making - minus the drunkenness and the drug dependence, of course. That's a big no-no.
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