Thursday, April 17, 2008

The horsie game

Today my kids, ages 6 and 4, wanted to learn how to play chess. I don't know why, but a friend gave my son a chess set for Christmas. I haven't taken it out of the box yet. I figured I have enough miscellaneous game pieces strewn through out my house. But for some reason today (maybe it was a result of the painkillers after my morning root canal with the not cute dentist) I agreed to open the box. I helped them set up the pieces on the board, or at least as well as I could remember. It has been a very long time since I played chess! I explained the rules for moving each piece and the point of the game to capture the opponent's king. The kids were giggling and couldn't wait to get started. They both started moving pieces at the same time and taking each other pieces at random until the 4 year old started crying. Then they started trading pieces back and forth. It's like a whole new set of rules! I tried to correct them and explain it again. I have no idea why I did this. Usually I know better than to reason with them. Eventually I gave up and we played a new game. It doesn't have an official name, but I think it's now known as the horsie game.

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