Chess: The Basic Checkmates done in Sandcastle art

Out on the beach is a great time for a chess lesson of the basic checkmates. You can create a sandcastle model of them like we did here at Lake Michigan. You don't need to make the whole chess board, you can just create the nine squares necessary for some of them. Here we did the basic mate with the Rook and the Knight. There are about seven basic checkmates. One is the smothered mate, and that one can be shown with only six squares present. Another is Anastasia's mate but that one would require more than nine squares because you need to show the rook a bit farther away from the king. It is great fun and great learning to use sandcastle art to show the basic checkmates. Your kids will never forget them if you can teach them this way.

The Rook checks the king, the king is in the corner so it only has access to half it's number of squares and the knight both guards rook and cuts off the escape square that the rook doesn't cover. The rook cuts off the other one. You will see this theme occur over and over in chess games, in the games of the GMs and if you look you will find this pattern again and again to use to find a plan for how to checkmate your opponent. This is only one of the basic checkmates. Others include the smothered mate, where the king's squares are cut off by his own pieces and he is in check from the knight, the Anastasian's mate, where the knight provides the properties of the back rank mate, and more. It is important to learn these basic checkmates if you want to get good at chess.

One of the most difficult things about chess is the abstract nature of the game. By showing a concept such as the checkmate with a rook and knight by building sand castles and allowing your child to participate with you in the process of making them, you help create the mass and the experience of the checkmating pattern in a way that is more memorable and becomes integrated in the subconscious memory. The children that participated in this chess lesson ranged in age from four to fourteen. All of them will now see this checkmating pattern better over the board during their games. Perhaps even the adults who led this project will too.