Aug 24, 20202 min read

Teaching Chess Through Fairy-Tales

Updated: Sep 8, 2020

When young kids think about the game of Chess they usually think of a black-and-white board and pieces and of a game that can seem boring or difficult. Trying to teach Chess to young kids might be difficult since they are impatient and wary of learning a game that is clouded by many misconceptions. We’ve found that it is much easier to reach young kids and to get them interested in Chess by trying to “speak their language” - for example, at ChessMatec we teach kids the game of Chess through movement games, videos and most importantly – fairy tale stories. Chess is, after all, the story of a Kingdom.

Children are much more likely to stay motivated to learn Chess once their imagination is sparked. In our Chess Kingdom at ChessMatec there are two Queens and two Kings, each of their eight children “the Pawns”, and two armies of Rooks, Bishops and Knights. Each of the characters in our Kingdom has their own story of why they can only move a certain way on the Chess Board, and how they interact with the other characters.

The Story of the Black and White Princes

The Story of the Black and White Princes tells young kids how the game of Chess arrived, beginning in faraway kingdom—and how it spread from there to the entire world, to be played by Kings and their subjects alike:

Many years ago, in a peaceful kingdom, there lived a King. He was good and wise, and he had two sons—two princes.

The Princes had long, complicated names but everyone called them the White Prince and the Black Prince. Why? Because each prince, ever since they were young kids, loved one specific color. The Black Prince loved everything black. He wore black clothes, he had black horses, and his favorite dogs were black. The White Prince, however, preferred everything to be white. His horses and dogs were white, too. But despite their differences, the princes were close brothers and loved each other.

When the princes grew older, they took over the Kingdom from their father and became Kings themselves. At first, everything seemed to be fine, but gradually, the princes started arguing. What began as small arguments eventually grew into serious disputes. The feud got so bad that the two brothers, who were once so close, split the kingdom’s army in two—a white army and a black army—and went to war!

To find out the rest of the story and learn how the two Princes finally resolved their differences you and your child are going to have to watch the video!

However, what I can tell you is that the moral of the story is that ever since then – all the disputes and arguments around the Kingdom, instead of being determined by fights and wars, were resolved by playing the game of Chess!