Games, including board games, are perceived by many adults as an activity that is not worth spending their time on, because you can have fun, supposedly, and more interesting. However, it should be borne in mind that most classic board games depend not only and not so much on luck as on the ability to play them. The player's task is either to outsmart the opponent, or to surpass him in attentiveness and the ability to build a strategy, which means that hobby for such a pastime perfectly trains these skills.
Checkers is one of the most widely known board games, and child psychologists insist that it is worth teaching a child the basic rules in early childhood.
Why do children need it?
At the age of five, the average child begins to see the relationship between his actions and the subsequent development of the situation, so it is at this stage that he is for the first time able to build some kind of strategy. Child development experts say this new ability should be developed as soon as possible, and one of the best ways to do this is to teach your toddler how to play checkers.
The gameplay in this case makes you think, because only a fairly smart and attentive person can win. At the same time, the competitive play component forces the child to return to the task again and again in order to still achieve success. Of course, against a serious opponent, a small beginner will constantly lose, which is not very interesting, but you can find opponents among peers - then the chances of success will be higher.
Regularly playing checkers, such a preschooler acquires at least the ability to concentrate on solving a problem (which is unusual for most children) and perseverance. These qualities are very useful for learning in school - a child is more likely to make certain progress immediately. Moreover, to win, you need to be able to think over a strategy for several moves ahead, which will come in handy at any stage of life. In checkers, the kid also learns that he needs to make decisions on his own, and some of them may turn out to be wrong - then you need to be able to accept the consequences of your own mistake.
If a parent has a rough idea of the game, it will be a good evening entertainment that helps to strengthen the family atmosphere. If the parents do not have such skills, and they also do not have the time, it is wiser to send the child to a specialized circle, where the child will be taught by professionals.
Game accessories
It should be noted that the rules of the game of checkers have several variations, named after the country in which they appeared - for example, English, Turkish, Italian. All this will probably be taught in special circles, but first it is worth mastering ordinary Russian checkers, accessories for which can be bought at any toy store.
The set familiar to our country looks pretty simple. The game board (and usually also the box for the entire game) is a wooden or plastic field that folds in half in the form of a suitcase, although it can even be depicted on cardboard. Such a field is a complete analogy of a chessboard - it is divided into eight rows in length and width, the cells are painted white and black every other. Checkers act as playing pieces - identical figures, of which there should be 12 pieces of black and white in the set.
An important condition is the possibility of a stable position of the checker in inverted form, and visually the difference between a correctly placed checker and an inverted one should be obvious.
Today, a whole game industry is working to satisfy children's desires, therefore classic checkers are somewhat inferior to competitors in terms of colorful design. With a strong desire, you can find a checker set designed specifically for kids - as the first such gift for home schooling, such a solution will have a slightly higher chance of getting a child interested.
Rules for beginners
It is checkers that are recommended as the first intellectual game because there are no difficult rules to understand. In general, remembering them is not difficult, although for a five-year-old child this can be a certain problem - if this happens, do not be lazy to find special rhymes on the Internet with which children can quickly remember the basic rules.
It should be noted that people who have never been seriously fond of checkers can only think that they know all the rules, while some points are a surprise to them. Let's consider all the principles of the game in a thesis:
- At the beginning of the game, checkers are placed in three rows on their side of the board, occupying only black cells, and they can also move exclusively along black, that is, only along the diagonal;
- checkers always move only forward, the end of the move must be on the nearest free cell;
- at home, this rule is often forgotten, but the player has no right to change his mind - even a simple touch of the figure means that now he must be like it;
- rivals take turns;
- to win, you need to kill all the opponent's checkers one by one - for this you need the enemy figure to stand directly in front of yours, and immediately behind it there is an empty field;
- you cannot go back, but you can kill the opponent's checkers in any direction;
- moreover, the figures move only one square forward, while you can kill several enemy checkers in one move, if they are located after one - in the process you can even change the direction of movement;
- one more rule that is often ignored: if the opponent gets hit, the player has no right to refuse to beat him;
- a checker that reaches the opposite edge of the board turns into a "king" - such a piece no longer has any restrictions on the direction of movement or even the length of the move, although it is still limited only by black diagonals;
- any ordinary checker can kill the "king";
- in some cases, a draw is possible if there are too few pieces left in the game, and the opponents are approximately equal (otherwise the game may drag on too long), or if the surviving opponent's pieces have blocked each other in such a way that there are no available moves.
In some varieties of the game, other special rules are possible, but this very simple version is enough for the kid.
Terms and time frame of the party
If you want your child not just to play sometimes in his free time, but to take checkers relatively seriously, you should immediately teach him to use at least basic terms. If everything is clear with a simple checker, then the board is the figure that is located on the right or left edge of the field, and the passed pawn is the one that will turn into a "king" after the next move.
"Queen", as we have already said, is the piece that has reached the end of the board opposite to the player, and the eighth row itself, which turns a checker into a "king", is called a lady's square. A thoughtful combination of moves, the result of which will turn a simple checker into a “king”, is quite logically called a breakthrough.
If the figure, walking around, does not hit anyone, this is called a quiet move, but you need to strive to make shock moves - when the figure has beaten the opponent. A move in which your own simple checker is purposefully substituted for the opponent's blow is called a submission. An exchange is a move (more precisely, one move from each of the opponents), as a result of which both lose the same number of figures.
If the simple checkers of one player are blocked by the checkers of the other so that they can neither move nor beat the opponent, this is called locking. When a similar situation has occurred with the participation of "kings", which, standing at opposite ends of the diagonals, do not allow a similar opponent's piece to leave their corner without sacrifice, the position on the board is called "tetanus". Finally, the position of checkers through one with free fields is usually called a sieve.
Tips for teaching laypersons
It is not so easy to teach a child to play from scratch - you will have to tell him absolutely everything, even what adults are used to considering obvious. The problem also lies in the fact that the kid must remember all this at once, and this is both difficult and not always interesting. Therefore, do not rush to dump all the information at once - for the first time, just place the checkers on the board is enough. If you can, always add a little fantasy - let knights fight on the field instead of faceless checkers.
In the first game, it is often advised to use eight checkers instead of twelve - this way there will be more free space, you do not need to immediately get involved in battle. Explain each move, your task now is not to win, but to fix the rules. It is inappropriate to smash a newbie, or to make fun of him now, but it is also not worth giving in, completely losing the game - this will not help mental development, but defeat would be an excellent incentive for self-improvement. However, sometimes it is useful to give in a little to equalize forces, because no one wants to constantly lose without the slightest hope of success.
Pay the baby's attention to the fact that it is advisable to think over not only the next move, but also the whole combination in advance. Be prepared that the preschooler will not immediately master the game - he will make mistakes, but you do not need to scold him at such moments, but explain what is what. But for successful actions you need to praise every time.
Remember that for a child's mind, such a game is quite tedious at first, so even in an interesting game, take rest breaks.
See the next video for checkers rules for beginners.
