Newsletter #14, March 6, 2017

Post date: Apr 21, 2017 3:58:41 AM

In This Newsletter

    • T-Shirts
    • Today’s Lesson
    • Prairie Chess Series Tournament #3, Saturday March 11
    • Chess Club Match with Coolidge Elementary, Tuesday March 28
    • Prairie Chess Camp, July 17-21, 2017

T-Shirts

I believe that I have handed out all the t-shirts. If you ordered one but did not receive it, please let me know. I do have a few extras if you have changed your mind and would like one. I will bring them to the tournament Saturday.

Today’s Lesson

As we head into the Spring Break, we wrapped up the lesson focus areas we have been working on the last couple weeks.

    • The Creek and Point students finished our overviews on the numerous chess openings looking at some of the options to the more popular double king pawn openings that kids most often see in tournaments.
    • The elementary students completed our working on “hanging pieces.” I am particularly impressed with how well our K-4 students did with the ChessKid.com chess puzzle this weeks. We had a few chess stars do more than 40 puzzles last week.

Following the lessons, we played some organized chess games.

    • The K-4 kids played online in their ChessKid.com account. With ChessKid.com I can view any game being played by our students. Today, I used the projector in the computer lab to project their games on the white board where I would commentate on the position. It was impromptu, but the kids really seemed to enjoy it as I took turns among all the games being played.
    • The Creek and Point students played in a tournament. Students were given the choice to play either standard rules or a variant known as 3-Check.

Prairie Chess Series Tournament #3, Saturday March 11

The third and final tournament of the Prairie Chess Series is this Saturday at Prairie Point. Many of you registered for all three tournaments back in January. If your plans have changed and you will not be there on Saturday (e.g. Spring Break vacation), please let me know. You can play in the third tournament even if you did not play in either of the first two tournaments. We will have trophies for this tournament as well as some individual and team trophies for the series totals (hint, we will win a team trophy). You can register online at https://onlineregistration.cc/CII/10PCST3.

Chess Club Match with Coolidge Elementary, Tuesday March 28

We have set up another chess match. This time, it will be against Coolidge Elementary School of Cedar Rapids. The match is set for Tuesday after school, March 28. So we will not meet on Monday, March 27 (sorry, I cannot take off work to have club Monday and the match on Tuesday). Pick up will be the normal time. Parents are invited to come and watch.

Prairie Chess Camp, July 17-21, 2017

The chess camp is now half full (32) including 6 Prairie students. It does sell out every year and if you want to join us, I strongly suggest registering early than later. We do offer a full refund until June 17. This is a great experience for the kids. The camp web page, with registration information, is available online at: http://www.chessiniowa.org/chesscamp. I have flyers on the table at chess club, too.