I'm interested in running a chess camp in my area to teach children and their parents the game. My hope is 1.) this will promote the game of chess in my area and 2.) this will give parents a reason to spend more time with their kids.

I've never done anything like this before and I'm wondering how much time (in hours) I should expect to spend teaching the game (rules, how pieces move, basic opening principles, basic tactics and strategy and notation). Any ideas?

Thank you in advance.

Hasn't any one here ever taught chess to a group of people?

not only do u have to teach that. chess is much more then wat u mentioned like the psychology of the game. clock management things like those and more.

Thank you for the reply. I'm only trying to teach people how to play the game casually at home with their children. Not really trying to teach them to be tournament players. I want to give them a little more than just how the pieces move and the rules. That's why I included basic opening principles, checkmating patterns, tactics etc. So they are not just blindly moving pieces around. Again the purpose of the camp is to promote the game of chess in my area and encourage parents to spend more time with their children. Chess is a fun way to do that.

I'm thinking I could teach the mentioned concepts in about 4 hours. The break down would look like this:

Saturday #1

10:30 am - Introduction to Chess - here I'll try to cover the board, how the pieces move, checkmate and stalemate

12:00 pm - Break for lunch

1:00 pm - Intro to Chess II - I'll cover rules (castling, en passant, touch move), notation

2:00 pm - End

Saturaday #2

10:30 am - Play to Win - Here I will show basic checkmating patterns as well as tactics

12:00 pm - Break for lunch

1:00pm - Play to Win II - Here I'll cover basic opening principles as well as elementary endgames (KQ v K, KR v K, KP v K)

2:00 pm - End

My plan is to provide a basic club chess set for each parent/child pair and a short manual that covers all the topics we'll discuss. The registration fee will only be to cover the cost of the chess sets and manuals as I already have a place to hold it free of charge. I won't get paid at all for it.

Any thoughts from anyone who has been to something like this or done this before?

it may be just me, but your timeline does not seem possible at all. the 10:30-12:00 section of learning the board, pieces, how they move, checkmate, and stalemate could easily take up an entire day or more depending on the level of the children (and the parents). and you obviously can't just go to checkmating patterns if the kids don't know what to do with the horsey-thingy.

 Thank you. That's what I'm trying to figure out. Just for clarification, the checkmate and stalemate in the first session is just defining what they and showing examples of each. Nothing about patterns until the next week. But you're right, it will still take longer. Do you have any suggestions?

i'd suggest that you might want to break the camp down into "levels" for the parents and kids. for example, the beginning level could simply be learning the pieces, how they move, maybe notation, and other very basic ideas. intermediate may get into specific endgames and opening principles and such. you'd really have to break it all down (and i don't have the time to do it right now).

also, if you ran it this way, parents and kids could stay in the level that works for them, or choose to move up if they want to learn more.

and in all cases, no matter what level they are in, you should give them time to just play a real game. even if it's only an hour per day or whatever. the kids will want to push the pieces even when they have no idea what they're doing. you could have parent/child vs. parent/child matches, for example, for the younger kids.

well ThreeNailz, I was an enthusiast at the age of 10/11 at my prep (boarding) school in England back about 1970 - I started a chess club ( I could already beat all the teachers, which probably acted as an incentive for a lotta guys to join up  ) and gave lessons and organised matches against other schools ( in which we did pretty well, considerin' it was a rugby school an' I had to start with most of the raw material from scratch ) - It all a question of patience an' determination - if u wanna do it u will - I generated the new players' enthusiasm by careful observation, praise when it was due, and diplomatic explanations of how the odd disaster had occurred - cos, as we all know, that kinda unavoidable though it can be discouragin' to some beginners.

Key word is probably 'perseverance' - 40 years on the school interhouse chess trophy is still named after yours truly who initiated the first one

Thank you guys for the input.

@trigs - Great suggestions! Do you think people will stay for longer periods of time. My principal seems to think that people won't come on Saturdays and the only other time I have available will be in the evenings. Maybe I could do it over the course of several days and have 1 hour for instruction and 1 hour of play time.

@smileative - very encouraging story. I just started an elementary chess club at the school I work at. The goal there is to get a team to be able to compete in scholastic tournaments. We started with 19 beginners. Some knew how the pieces move but that is all. I only had one hour, one day a week for 8 weeks to work with them. Needless to say they are nowhere near ready. I'm seeing where the perserverance comes in. I'm starting a middle school club next year. I understand it will take years to build a competitive program and I'm willing to stick to it. Thanks for sharing your story.

just starting out, maybe you could have a saturday tournament once a month or something and see how it turns out. maybe morning instruction and afternoon tournament sort of thing.

for after school i'd suggest 50% of the time instruction and 50% playing games.

Thanks trigs. You've been most helpful. I think for now I'll start by just teaching bare essentials. Then I'll offer the intermediate stuff at another time. Good idea about the tournament.