I am amazed at how many of our students absolutely LOVE the game of chess. One of the kindergartners gets to the morning program every day before I arrive at 7am. Every day he sets up the chess board, waiting for me to walk through the doors. And every day he never fails to ask, "Aaron, can you play chest with me?" I smile every time I have to walk him through the correct pronunciation of the word.
I usually give the kids an option, "Easy," "Medium," or "Hard" difficulty they want me to play against them. One particular day, this early morning chess fanatic asked me to play "Medium." This game started out just like all the others, as I usually intentionally make ridiculous moves so that he can capture my pieces easily. But since I was trying to up my game from the usual "Easy" level he asks me to play, I tried mixing up my moves to throw him off a bit.
Relative to elementary school kids, I am pretty darn good at chess. However, this one day he trapped me. He put me in checkmate and I didn't even mean for it to happen. He did it on his own!
Although we know that he likely put me in checkmate by accident, that didn't matter to him. "Today is the best life of my day!!!" he exclaimed, not knowing that he messed up the phrase.
I laughed with him, told him that I was very proud of how well he did, and shook his hand. "Good game."
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