The Holland Chess Club

Noah and Mercy have been a part of the local chess club for a couple of months now.  It is a scholastic chess club, which basically means that it exists to teach children chess.  Every Saturday begins with a review of concepts everyone has learned as well as a new lesson and then the students are broken up into a couple of groups based on ability, the youngest ones to learn more and the older ones to play against other students and practice what they've learned.

Mercy is in the youngest group which is mostly made up of other kiddos who know a lot of the rules, but aren't quite ready for strategy and may suddenly break out into a princess story with the 'horses' galloping through a magical forest in the middle of a chess match.

Noah is in the group of older kids and has already advanced to the second level, earning a special dog tag for each that he can proudly wear on his name tag lanyard each week.

Today, Peter and Jeremiah went with us 'just to watch' and found themselves deep in a chess match and earning the first couple of dog tags  ;-)

Here are a few pictures from this morning~~

      

Here is the lesson time at the beginning                                                                       

                                                                            

Mercy and her buddy Meredith always play each other.

 Lesson time for the little ones - this week they were only allowed to use the pawns and bishops as practice. (above)

      

Noah is, of course, very serious about this...                                                                      

                                                                                     

The chart showing what level each student has achieved.

       

Jeremiah and Peter 'just watching'

Their Chess Club even has a Facebook page in case you are inclined to follow them:   http://www.facebook.com/pages/Holland-Chess-Club/117529228307487