Silver Knights is a locally owned small business, started by two brothers, with the goal of teaching chess to kids. Over the last 15 years they’ve taught chess to 100,000 kids in hundreds of schools in and around DC. For the last year, they’ve been running their club online! Each week, close to a thousand students ages 5-14 have a lot of fun learning chess and socializing with each other in their live online small group classes.
In celebration of the online club’s birthday, they have a special discount for KidFriendly DC parents: Get $50 off your first month, so it’s $29 instead of $79 if you sign up by the end of March with the code KFDC!
The club is designed for busy families, so scheduling is flexible and you can start and stop any time, and the program is month to month with no long term commitment required.
So, how exactly does an online chess club for kids work? Right after signing up, you schedule a Getting Started meeting, where you and your child chat with a member of the Silver Knights team about how fun chess club will be, what your child will learn, and how everything works. They also do a quick no-pressure assessment to figure out the level of lessons where your child should begin. They teach Pawns (wait… what’s chess?), Kings (I love the Sicilian Dragon!), and everyone in between.
After the Getting Started meeting, you can schedule weekly small group classes. These are 55 minutes long, and you can do one per week. There are a ton of class slots, so it’s easy to find one that works for you:
- Mondays: 11am, 2pm, 3:30pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm
- Tuesdays: 3:30pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm
- Wednesdays: 11am, 2pm, 3:30pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm
- Thursdays: 3:30pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm
- Fridays: 3:30pm, 4:30pm
- Saturdays: 11am, 1pm
Scheduling is flexible, so it’s no problem to usually do, say, 4:30pm on Tuesdays, but switch time slots occasionally. (The Silver Knights team is nice and will help to make things fit your schedule!) The way the classes work is that the kids do a silly icebreaker to meet each other and the coach, followed by a 25 minute lesson. The lesson is designed to be participatory and exciting for the kids. After the lesson, the coach pairs the students up and they play games against each other on a safe online platform. During the games, the kids can chat with each other and the coach about the games… or the fun things they did in the snow last week. Curious what a lesson is like? Watch a clip of a Knights class.
In addition to the weekly lesson, there’s a bunch of other stuff included in the online club membership:
- Broadcast lessons every weekday.
- Discounts for online chess camps.
- Online tournaments on Tuesdays at 5pm, Wednesdays at 5:30pm, Fridays at 4:30pm, and Saturdays at 9:30am
- Special events, like an online tournament with a club from Australia or extra special guest instructors.
The chance to easily bring in guest instructors has been really exciting, and has given students access to brilliant diverse chess players and role models. A few examples are: The best female chess player of all time (two visits!), a Colombian women’s grandmaster (and engineer), two stars of the acclaimed chess documentary Brooklyn Castle, a couple Silver Knights alumni who’ve won a combined 11 state tournaments and 7 national tournaments, and a US (adult) Champion… with another US Champion visiting in April!
The Weissbarth brothers’ early chess days
Club membership is $79/month, but as a special for the club’s one year anniversary, you can get $50 off your first month with the coupon code KFDC. Learn more and register at www.skchess.com!
Questions? You can reach out to info@skenrichment. They’re nice!
This post is sponsored by Silver Knights, however, I only promote programs, places, and businesses that I genuinely believe in and think would appeal to KFDC readers.
