UNO and Chess

Today was a day full of UNO and chess. I have already introduced the game UNO yesterday but chess was totally new.
I noticed that children got extremely interested in UNO. Kids of different ages and development. One of the main advantages of playing UNO in such a diverse circle is that all the kids get to participate. Nobody has to just sit there and watch others. Another advantage is that kids learn colors and numbers in addition to few action words like "skip", "reverse", or "draw". I have modified the rules a little bit so that each player has to actually say out loud the number and the color, for example, "one blue". That way they practice pronunciation. It made me happy to see that even the shiest of all the shy kids started saying out loud number and colors. And or course the most important that they are actually very interested in the game.

And now my main passion - chess.

I have selected kids of about ages 10 through 14 who showed great interest in learning. They were very excited.
I am not sure if they were more excited about the game itself or playing with new pieces and looking at the new demonstration board. My current students are two girls Rangeena and Manju, and 4 boys Ashish, Uttham, Mohit and Rohit. Mohit and Manju seem like they are picking up very fast so is the smartest girl of the class Rangeena.

At the beginning I was puzzled. What to start with? Kids show great interest but how to develop it and keep it in the same time? So I started with showing where the pieces would go. After they all got it I called the names of the pieces. It was funny to see the kids calling rook the elephant and the bishop camel. I guess that's what they are called in Hindi.

After naming each piece I started with pawn movement. Most kids got it fast. The bishop moves were easy too.

Now the most difficult part the knight. Couple kids got it very fast but Uttham had the most problem. He just could not understand the jumping over other pieces. In the picture above Uttham is showing where the knight can go. After a long long long time Uttham finally started to move the knight all over the board demolishing all the pieces like a mad child.

Uhmmmmm the dynamics of the group went crazy direction. While a good attentive Rangeena was being a good student the other ones started moving all their pieces without any understanding yelling at each other and sometimes even smashing the pieces of the opposite side with one hand. Uttham still was puzzled with everything. I think he is my slowest student. It will take a lot of time.

Not sure how the chess lessons would go. The village kids are different from city kids. I was happy to see the interest. They are now looking forward to the next lesson. They are also excited with new sets and the demonstration board they get to touch and play with. The time will show what's next. It was not easy today.