Skills Learned by Children Who Play Chess

There are many things children learn in school, that are very important to their development, schools teach them their academics, sports teach them fair play, and they learn social skills, all of these skills and more are learned when children learn to play the game of chess. Schools and parents alike are learning that through playing chess, children increase there developmental thinking skills and learn a since of fair play as well as the confidence they need to play chess in competition.

Many of the world greatest players are children as they learn to think quickly, their abilities come from the basic skills they learn from playing Chess. One skill that is learned from playing chess is reading, they learn that they need to read different chess books on the subject. They will research game moves that will help them to increase both their knowledge of the game and to investigate new and exciting moves that will give them the advantage when playing.

Children also enhance their writing skills, by writing out their scores, and keeping track of the moves of their opponents. Many people keep a journal that helps them learn from mistakes that they made when playing a game that they lost so that they learn not to repeat those mistakes. This teaches them to build strategies that help them in tournament play.

Another skill learned by children who play chess is mathematics, because the chess pieces each have a value and the values are important in maintaining the balance in the game. By learning the values you also learn to keep your stronger pieces alive and that you can afford to loose your lesser pieces. Knowing this valuable information will keep them from losing the games because the lost their higher value pieces first.

One of the single most important skills that children learn is responsibility, they learn that they are responsible to read as much as they can on the subject, they are responsible to show up on time for practices and tournaments and of course they learn they are responsible to maintain control of their board and keep from making bad decisions. The decision making process is very important to children as well, creating in them the confidence that the decisions that they make will work in there favor or will hurt them in the long run. Chess helps build their sense of responsibility as well as their decision-making skills when children play the game.

Lastly Children learn respect from playing chess, they learn to respect the game, respect the coach, respect the time and effort they must put into the game and they also learn to be respectful of their opponents when playing the game. Children also get a since of fair play and learn to be gracious winners and good losers. These qualities will take them far in their later lives when they will have other people to respect as well.

Chess play is important in teaching children skills such as logical thinking, decision-making, mathematics, problem solving and of course critical thinking. In tests it has been found that children who play chess have a higher IQ (intelligence quotient) than they did before they started playing the game. These children tend to treat other people fair and respectful as well. Scores also show that they had higher reading scores, better memory, enhanced language skills, more advanced mathematical skills. Those same children proved to be more creative and had better critical thinking skills. In general these children demonstrated better mental processes than they had before playing the game.

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