Chess is a fantastic brain sport. This age-old game of logic and strategy is the perfect mind exercise for young kids, offering a long list of benefits when it comes to their brain development, discipline, and skills. If you want your kids to be skilled in this game, start them young and spark their interest by letting them join a club where they can learn chess online and have fun. Today, there are numerous chess learning clubs and centers operating online, giving you access to chess education at the comfort of your home. This summer, consider enrolling your kids to some beginner or advanced chess classes to enhance their game skills and help them reap the many benefits of this strategic exercise:
Chess improves memory and concentration – According to a study conducted at the University of Memphis, playing chess helps improve kids' visual memory, while also significantly enhancing their attention span and their spatial-reasoning capability. Just like academic education, memory and concentration go hand in hand in chess. To play this game well, focusing on the objective is crucial as well as constantly visualizing what's happening on the board, the pieces, and the way they move around. This helps improve concentration while also strengthening memory in the process of learning classic strategies.
Chess enhances Math and reading skills – Chess is unique in that it revolves around problem solving through moving variables. This is why it is no surprise that children who are good at the game also show proficiency in math subjects. There have been numerous researches and studies that prove this as well as those that show how the game also impacts children's reading skills. Separate multi-year investigations of elementary school students in Los Angeles, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York, and Canada found that students who play the game show improvement in their math and/or reading assessment scores—higher than their non-playing peers. One Venezuelan study also found that chess helps increase students' IQs. Dr. Stuart Marguilies, an educational psychologist, and researcher, suggests that the cognitive processes for chess and reading are the same, requiring thinking, decoding, comprehension, and analysis.
Chess fosters critical thinking, logic, and creativity – Finally, chess fosters logic by encouraging if-then thinking (if I move here, then my opponent may move here, or here). This is critical thinking in action. Additionally, some studies also show how chess boosts creativity and originality quite dramatically, as it trains the mind to experiment with possibilities—a cornerstone of original thinking.
About the author:
Albert Fishman has been involved in teaching chess since 1996 and is part of the IchessU coaching staff.
Like it? Share it!
About the Author
IchessU Joined: September 8th, 2012 Articles Posted: 80
