Teach Your Kids To Think – With Chess

U.S. Women’s Chess Champ, Dr. Alexey Root, offers free seminar to adults at four TRL libraries, August 8 – 14

Parents and teachers of school-aged children can participate in a free seminar that shows how chess teaches skills important to academic success, skills such as classifying, pattern recognition, decoding, creating, and predicting. Sessions are being offered by Alexey Root, Ph.D., the 1989 U.S. Women’s Chess Champion, at four Timberland Regional Library branches.

Classes are hands-on. All will have a chance to practice lessons from Dr. Root’s book, “Thinking with Chess: Teaching Children Ages 5-14.” Books will be available for purchase after the class. No prior knowledge of chess is needed, but participants are asked to bring chess sets and boards if they have them.

Program dates and locations:

• Tumwater Timberland Library: Thursday, August 8, 1-3 p.m., 7023 New Market St., Tumwater, (360) 943-7790
• Chehalis Timberland Library: Saturday, August 10, noon-2 p.m., 400 N Market Blvd., Chehalis, (360) 748-3301
• Shelton Timberland Library: Monday, August 12, 6-7:30 p.m., 710 W Alder St., Shelton, (360) 426-1362
• Olympia Timberland Library: Wednesday, August 14, 7:30-9 p.m., 313 8th Ave SE, Olympia, (360) 352-0595

Dr. Root has a Ph.D. in education from UCLA. A U.S. Women’s Chess Champion, she has a “Woman International Master” title from the World Chess Federation (FIDE). Root is a Senior Lecturer in Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas and has six books in print on the relationship between chess and education. She has taught chess to over 2,500 people, including children.