Learn to Play Chess

Homeschool Review Crew

I have lots of different age ranges in my house and all of them love a good board game.  One thing my older kids love to do is play chess.  My younger children just hadn’t been able to grasp playing this complicated game yet but were eager to learn to play chess.  This is why they were so excited when we received a review product from Brain Blox. We received the Fun Family Chess set!

We were so excited that the cat was even in on the opening act.  She might have just wanted to lay in the box but we’re gonna go with she wants to learn to play chess too.  

About Fun Family Chess

Have you ever wanted to learn to play chess?  Do you think chess is hard to learn and maybe you would never understand all the rules? 

Fun Family Chess makes it fun!  You learn to play chess in steps that teach you the rules after you’ve already mastered a version of chess that allows it to be easy to make the transition. 

Brain Blox has a mission to make educational toys that can be enjoyed by all and make the family time special and memorable.  I love that their mission statement says they want to help families turn off the devices and enjoy being together.  This is a huge thing in our home.  We do use screens for school and of course, here I am typing to you, but we don’t do screen time for video games or computer games and rarely do we watch movies.  Instead, family time is reading together or playing games or even building legos.  

Fun Family Chess is color-coded and comes with everything you need to learn to play chess.  Included you will find a foldable wooden chessboard with latches(very nice one), 32 wooden chess pieces in a soft pouch(can’t say enough about how nice these are), full-color chess book, 2 reference cards, and a chess cube(my kids call it a dice). 

The board has these neat little cheats with the depictions of the pieces that go where for starting the game.  It’s nice with helping to figure out the setup. 

I do want to mention that there is an online site that you can get a free two-month membership with the purchase of the game.  It’s called ChessKid.com.  My children have not used this site and probably won’t as they have lots of siblings to play with.  The site calls it a fun family-friendly place that is safe for kids to learn to play chess.  It sounds like they play against other kids online but I’m not 100% sure on that part.  

There are lots of videos on YouTube for learning how to play chess or just to see how other people might make moves.  I have found that watching other people play chess has really helped my children to think more strategically in their own games.  

Our Thoughts

The minute my kids saw what was in the box they were ready to open it and get to playing.  I was very impressed with the quality and durability of the set.  It seems to be a set that will last for years and it’s definitely been getting a workout here at our house lately.  Having something that stands up to the wear of normal and frequent use is definitely something I look for in a product.  

Being a family with eleven kids I know we’re extra hard on things but so far this game has no scratches or broken pieces and that says a lot for the quality of the product.  We stand behind this one whether you are using it to learn to play chess or just as a standard chessboard.

I loved watching my older children work with the younger ones to teach them to play chess.  But the most heart-melting moments for me were watching my husband sit and watch them play offering words of advice and laughter plus words of a job well done or a play that could have had a better outcome.  While I know that’s not the purpose of the review I do want you to know that that is what happens.  The family comes together around the chessboard and it’s wonderful!

Okay, back to the game.

My older kids did not want to play with the dice and cards but chose to just use the board as a chessboard which was fine with me.  But when they sat aside to be the helper of their younger siblings that did use the dice system.  They found it a bit confusing since it goes against how they have learned to play chess.  

We highly recommend this fun way of learning to play chess.  And even if you use it for standard chess this is a wonderful board that your whole family will love.  I love that it folds up with the pieces inside so it’s compact and easy to bring with you.

Using the dice or cube that is provided can be fun.  It can also make kids who really like playing regular chess a bit off because they see really good moves to make but they have to only do what the dice says.  So for us, we used the board as regular chess for the older kids but with the cube for the younger kids.

I love that my six-year-old daughter can now play chess!  She has not graduated to standard chess yet but only to the fun family chess but that’s okay!  She loves playing and I love that she is having fun with her siblings and by watching them play standard chess and having already learned this game she will be able to master all the rules soon.  

With that said my eight-year-old daughter has already gone from fun family chess to standard chess using this board, the rules, the videos, and her siblings/father’s help.  I am amazed at how quickly she picked it up!

Want to learn to play chess?  Looking for a fun game to play as a family?  Check this one out!

Learn More

In order to learn more about how other families used this Fun Family Chess set to learn to play chess make sure you check out all of the reviews over on the Main Blog Post on the Homeschool Review Crew page.  You can also find Brain Blox on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.  

Here is a fun video showing how this game works and what to expect.  If you have any questions I’d love to answer them for you as well and you can check out the Brain Blox YouTube channel for other videos as well.  You can also check out our review of the Wooden Planks from Brain Blox as well!