chessKIDS academy offers online interactive lessons, quizzes and games for kids, five chess computers for you to play, and a resource centre for
parents and teachers of kids who play, or would like to play, chess, including a scholastic chess download pack to enable any school to run a chess club.
At present there is no specific charge but we encourage users to make a donation. I have put a lot of time and effort into the site, and there are also costs associated with running it such as hosting and domain fees, so anything you contribute will help developing the site as well as promoting chess for kids.
To make full use of the site you will also need JavaScript, Java and cookies enabled. You will also need the
ChessBase
Habsburg Diagram Font (permission to download granted by ChessBase gmbh) to use some of the downloadable material.
I am also working on an extensive series of quizzes, drills and worksheets to complement the online lessons. The first volume of a written course designed for parents and children, Journey Through Chess, is available for free download here.
My philosophy that chess is NOT a kids' game, but a game for adults which some children can excel at. We are unhappy about what currently happens in many schools, where children are encouraged to learn the moves but are provided with no further instruction, and no indication that further instruction will be beneficial. While children who learn in such an environment will gain some short-term enjoyment and, perhaps, some limited educational benefit from the game, what they will NOT gain is a life-long interest.
The skills children need to go beyond playing at a low level are skills that children usually develop at about 11 or 12: complex logical thought and the ability to study on your own. If children can be encouraged to develop these skills using a game they enjoy playing then the potential benefit is enormous.
Parents and teachers: we appreciate emails to let us know what you think about
the site, but can't promise to reply to every message we receive.
I am always interested in discussing potential commercial applications using material from this site. Please email us if you're interested.
If you think you've found a mistake you may well be right! But first look at our help page for a possible solution to your problem. Please email me and let me know exactly what lesson, quiz or game you are viewing, exactly what is on the screen and exactly what the problem is and I will put it right as soon as I can.
Finally, there are two versions of this site. The 'straight' version, with some facilities disabled, is at www.chesskids.com and the original, which includes a lot of subversive humour and metaphor designed to make children laugh, is at www.chesskids.me.uk.
Richard James was the Director of
Richmond Junior Chess Club, which he founded along with Mike Fox, from 1975 to 2007, and returned to teach there again in 2012. He was also Chess Programme Manager of the Richmond Chess Initiative from 1993 to 2005. He has been teaching chess to children since the early 1970s. Among his former pupils are Luke McShane, who won the World Under 10 Championship at the age of 8 and reached the position of 52nd in the world in July 2004, and 2004, 2005 and 2006 British Champion Jonathan Rowson. "Richard James ... introduced me to the possibility of improving by studying books as well as playing." He currently runs a consultancy service for schools in West and South West London, teaches chess at several school in the area and coaches a number of private pupils.
He is also the author of
Move One, a chess course for children and various unpublished coaching books which are
available here.
Together with Mike Fox he is the author of The Complete Chess Addict, The Even More Complete
Chess Addict and the Addicts' Corner column which ran in
CHESS Magazine for 16 years.
