Battleship Chess: Fun Without the Video Part

Okay, here's a crazy thought. Third through Fifth graders came to the Hayden Library to play chess. Even more strange is that we actually played Battleship Chess, which is a fun variation of the classic game.

Now, I know what you might be thinking: did they have a good time? Were they entertained? I would say they absolutely were, and even more, they learned something in the process.

Most of the participants were familiar with chess but didn't play too often, so I had the chance to break down the regular rules of chess play for them. Once they had a decent grasp of the game, we put a divider down the center of the boards, had the players put their pieces anywhere on their half, then removed the divider and had them go at it with normal chess rules (this was the Battleship variation).

In addition to chess, we also had Sorry! and Battleship available to play. Both games had kids laughing and enjoying their stay.

When I've done game programs for this group in the past, I had video games as the main attraction with board games on the side to fill your time. But as I kept doing that, I noticed that some kids gravitated toward the board games more than the video games, and that gave me this idea; how about I do some programs that are strictly based on board games and see what happens?

Battleship Chess was the first program like this, and it was a very encouraging experiment. Moving forward, I'm going to bounce between a video game program and a board game program and see what we see. Love live games!