Teaching my son chess by the campfire

You have a lot of time to kill on a camping trip. On one of ours, I decided I wanted my son to learn chess. So we sat by the campfire and set up the board.

I had a pretty good idea of how it could go. If I had just laid out the rules, I think he would have completely zoned out.

So instead, I introduced the pieces to him as a war game. They were different types of soldiers moving around the board. They could kill the other soldiers, and there were rules that governed what each of them could do.

By the end of the first game, he had absorbed all the basic rules of movement for the pieces, and we had played a game. I was blown away.

Over the months that followed, he kept asking to play more. He had lots more questions. It got to the point where I actually had to look things up, because I'm not that savvy at chess. I learned a few things myself.

Now he plays very actively. He plays during recess at school. He plays other kids who are much older than he is. He's a little chess whiz, and I love it.

The funny thing is that he doesn't really excel at academics. His attention is all over the place in school.

But when he plays a game of chess, he's zoned in. He's looking a few moves ahead. He's in it to win. There's a huge contrast between what he does academically and what he does on the game board.

I understand how he learns. I've understood it since he was very, very young.

One thing I know about myself is that I'm a great teacher for him, because I'm able to explain things to him the way I know he needs to hear them. That's why chess sank in so well. I knew how the message had to be delivered for him.

I'm sure that for other kids, the message would have been different. For him, it was dialed in, and it worked.

For him, it was dialed in, and it worked.

I try to do that with everything I teach him. It's very custom-tailored education. By the fire, it just happened to look like a board full of soldiers.