How to teach your child chess at home in 7 days
You need a board, 20 minutes a day and a week. You don't need to be good at chess. The plan goes one piece at a time.
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Most parents who want their child to learn chess hold back for one reason: “I’m not good at it myself.”
You don’t need to be. You need to stay one day ahead of your child for a week. After the week, the two of you will play full games, badly and happily, and your child will know every rule.
What you need: a chess set, a table, 20 minutes a day, and a handful of coins or bottle tops to use as targets. A board drawn on paper works if you have no set.
Two rules for the week
Stop while it’s still fun. Twenty minutes is plenty for a six-year-old. End the session when your child wants one more go, not after they’ve drifted off.
Don’t let them win on purpose. Children know. Make the game fair another way: once you play full games, take your queen off the board, or both rooks. As your child improves, put pieces back. A win against a weakened parent still counts. A gifted win teaches nothing.
Day 1: the board
The board has 64 squares, light and dark. Set it so each player has a light square in the bottom-right corner. Children remember it as “light on the right.”
Columns have letters, a to h, from White’s left. Rows have numbers, 1 to 8, from White’s side. Every square has a name: e4, d5, h8.
Game: call out a square, your child puts a coin on it. Then swap. Ten rounds. By the end, your child names squares faster than you.
Day 2: rook and bishop
The rook moves in straight lines, along rows and columns, as far as it likes. The bishop moves along diagonals, and stays on its own colour forever.
Game: put a rook on the board and three coins. Your child collects all the coins in as few moves as possible. Then do the same with a bishop. Ask why the bishop never reaches some coins.
Day 3: queen and knight
The queen moves like a rook and a bishop together, the strongest piece on the board. The knight moves in an L: two squares one way, one square to the side. The knight is the only piece allowed to jump over others.
Game: knight to the coin. Put the knight in a corner and a coin somewhere in the middle. How many jumps to reach it? The knight frustrates many children at first. Give it two or three sessions.
Day 4: pawns
Pawns move forward one square, or two on their first move. They capture one square diagonally forward. A pawn reaching the far side turns into any piece, almost always a queen.
Game: the pawn race. Each player gets eight pawns on their starting row and nothing else. First to get a pawn to the other side wins. Children learn more about pawns from this game than from any explanation.
Day 5: the king, check and checkmate
The king moves one square in any direction. When a king is attacked, it’s “check,” and the player must get out of check at once. If there is no way out, it’s checkmate, and the game is over.
Set up this position and ask your child to find the checkmate for White.
Two answers work. Let your child find both. Then move the white king one square away and ask if the checkmate still works. It doesn’t, and working out why teaches more than the checkmate.
Day 6: the full setup and castling
Set up the whole board together. Rooks in the corners, then knights, then bishops. The queen goes on her own colour, white queen on a light square. The king takes the last square.
Teach castling today: once per game, if the king and a rook haven’t moved and the squares between them are empty, the king moves two squares toward the rook and the rook hops over to the other side. It tucks the king away safely.
Leave en passant for later. It confuses beginners and comes up rarely in their games.
Day 7: a full game, written down
Play your first full game. White moves first. Before each move, say the move out loud by its square: “knight to f3.” Write the first ten moves down on paper, one line per move.
After the game, read the moves back together and set the game up again. This is the habit strong players have, and your child has it from day seven.
When home teaching runs out
The week works. Then a new problem arrives, sooner than you expect: your child starts beating you. They want stronger opponents, puzzles which stretch them, someone to review their games and point at the move where things went wrong.
Lichess is free, with puzzles and online games and no adverts. Set it up together and play the daily puzzles side by side.
Ask yourself one question at this point. Who is going to look at your child’s games with them and show them what they missed? If the answer is you, keep going. If it isn’t, look for a club or a class with a teacher who reviews games, and be wary of anyone who promises chess will raise school marks. The strongest research doesn’t back the claim. You will have seen what chess gives your child, at your own table.
Check this yourself
The sources behind this post. Read them, and read the people who disagree, before you decide.
- About LichessFree chess site with puzzles, no adverts, run on donations.
- Sala and Gobet, chess instruction in schools (2016), ChessBase summaryRead before you believe any claim about chess and school marks.
Sammy founded Esubu Tech Academy and designs its coding and chess curriculum. He holds a BSc in Data Science from KCA University and is studying for an MSc in Artificial Intelligence at the Open University of Kenya. He learned to code as an adult, after years of unfinished tutorials, and teaches children so they start sooner.