I'm working on a full review blog post right which will be done soon, but the quick answer is that the videos themselves are designed for the parent and consist of Sherie teaching her 3-year-old how to play chess. Yes, they are high quality. Sherie's program is a for beginners, and it is thorough. This is part I and it ends with her daughter's first full game of chess. She's working on a part II that will teach castling and more advanced play. Full disclosure: I actually traded my music e-books and a blog review for this product, so I didn't actually buy it. But I would have, and I will purchase part II when it comes out!
Here is why Sherie's program was/is so appealing to me. I started teaching my son chess two years ago. (
http://www.professional-mothering.com/2011/01/chess-for-preschoolers.html). With the help of some of the free videos on
www.chesskid.com, I did teach him how to set up the board and how the pieces move. It didn't take that long. But I struggled to "put all the pieces together" so to speak to actually play a game. I don't know if an app would help with that either. Maybe it would, I'll check it out as well. I dropped it and have tried to pick it up again a few times but I haven't made it a priority. Chess is a big deal for my brothers and I see a lot of benefit in chess because after you know the basics there is so much depth to the game. But I need my kids to play a whole game first! I can see that with Sherie's program we will be able to accomplish that.
One thing Sherie does that I haven't done is let my kids win. Not only that, she helps her daughter with strategies during game play. Her daughter beamed when she won, she had her first taste of success. In her final notes she says that part II will delve more into strategy and how to become truly advanced for their age. But she has a good point when she says that a 3-year-old that can play a game of chess at all is an advanced player for their age and I see her point. Soon enough they can learn how to loose, but if they have tasted success first they will want to come back for more. Looking at the full board with all of the pieces for the first time can be quite intimidating so I think letting them win a few times will make it less scary. The workbook pages are really great. They consist of a coloring page for each piece, counting activities (how many of these pieces are pawns?), and advance to a chess board with a few questions like "draw a circle around the two pawns that can take out the white rook". The e-books came first (the manual and the workbook), and the video was made later to help parents through the process, to witness that it can be done, and show them how easy it is to do.
So I give it two thumbs up, 5 stars, what have you. This product is perfect for where we are and fills in the holes I had in my own approach. We're starting school on Monday and I plan on teaching my 3 and 5 year-olds. It's a 12 week program, so I'll give another update then. It may be awhile before my children are playing each other but by the end of summer I hope they will be able to do that.
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