New Bookmark Coming Soon

Each year, we print out bookmarks with Chess related designs for the kids to use.  Here is this year’s first bookmark design.  

We hope to have it printed and passed out to the students in the next few weeks.

 

Club Meeting – September 21st

Chess club will meet in the gym for the next two weeks.  The library is setup for the annual Bookfair and not available to us.  

We will setup chess boards on the floor as there are no tables/chairs in the gym.  

Parents may want to consider wearing jeans.  Please do not wear shoes with heels as they can scratch the gym floor. 

 

Club Meeting – September 7th

In today’s meeting, James showed the following video to the Pawns group:

Chris reviewed the Ruy Lopez opening and showed the following video to the Knights group:  

Ruy Lopez is the short name of Rodrigo Lopez de Segura who was a Spanish priest who lived between 1530 and 1580.  Ruy Lopez wrote a book in 1561 called Libro de la invención liberal y arte del juego del Axedrez which was one of the first definitive books about modern chess in Europe. 

The Ruy Lopez Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5) is named after him, as is a variation in the Petroff Defence (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 Qe7).

The painting above shows Ruy Lopez being defeated by Leonard di Cutri, an Italian chess master.  After Leonard won against Ruy Lopez in Spain, he asked for his town Cutro to be exonerated of taxes and called Cutro “City of Chess”, where every year this event is remembered in a traditional day in August.

We also handed out some bonus chess homework that reviews how to take Chess notation during a chess game.  We ask that each student play a game of chess this weekend and write down the game in Chess notation on the provided notation sheet.  Students that turn in the notation sheet with a game written down will get a Chess buck at next week’s meeting.  If you did not receive the handout at today’s meeting, you can download and print it at home using this link.

Reading Chess Books Earns Chess Bucks!

We have new 50 cent Chess bucks that students can earn for checking out and reading chess books from our club library. Here is what the new Chess bucks look like:

Our chess club has a nice library of Chess books that are written to help kids improve their game.  Kids can check out these books during Chess club and they have two weeks to read and return them.  For some of the books, we have a quick quiz that the student has to fill out to show what they learned from that book.  

Club Registration is Open

Registration for the 2018-2019 school year opened on August 15th.  Please click on the About section above and then click on the Registration link.  That page gives all the details on the registration process and a link to the Registration Form. You can also click here to go directly to that page.

Club registration will end on September 14th.  After this date, we will no longer accept any new students until the second semester begins in January 2019.  

For parents and students that are thinking about joining our club, you can attend our first three club meetings without committing to join.  Come to our meetings and see how you like it.  We ask that you make your final decision to join by our registration deadline of September 14th. 

Spicewood Chess Club at Enchanted Rock

Sean wearing his club tshirt at the top of Enchanted Rock!

Let’s make this a recurring post.  Send us photos of yourself wearing your Chess club tshirt from interesting places and we will post them here for everyone to see.  

Great idea Sean and family!  

New and returning students meet this week

We had a successful first club meeting last week for our returning students.  Thank you to our parent volunteers for making the meeting go smoothly.  

This week, we welcome all of our new students to our club meeting.  James is preparing to teach the basics of Chess to our beginning students, so don’t worry if you have never played Chess before.  This is also good for parents who want to learn how to play.  You can watch James’s lesson as well.  

Parents, please remember to complete all of the steps required to join the club.  You can review the registration requirements by clicking the above pulldown menu under “About” and then choose “Registration”   Just follow the six easy steps.  

Please make sure to make your checks out to “RRISD Spicewood Elementary Chess Club” and put the name of your student somewhere on the Check so we can properly credit them.  

Thank you to all the Door Monitor volunteers.  It looks like we have slots filled up for the next 11 meetings!   

 

First Chess Club Meeting for Returning Students

All returning Chess club students are invited to our first Chess club meeting on the SECOND day of school, Friday August 17th starting at 6:35am in the Library.

All parents are asked to follow the steps to register your student(s) by going to our Registration page located here:

The registration fee is the same as last year.  Please make sure you follow the directions for making your payment.  This we, we ask that if you plan to turn in a check at this Friday’s meeting, please postdate it for August 24th.  The reason for this is that Ms. Reeb will not be at the club meeting on the 17th but will be at the following meeting.  

For all NEW students who want to join the Chess club, your first meeting will be August 24th. Same time and location as above. 

Thank you and we are all looking forward to a fun year of Chess and Chess related activities. 

Chris and James