E50 The Secret of the Checkered Kingdom
Let's learn how some chess pieces move in this Brain Warm Up, while also learning some Spanish and doing some problem-solving.
If you are looking for an engaging screen-free activity for your next car ride or living room hangout, we have a brand new audio adventure ready for you! Today, we are opening up a magical wooden box and stepping onto a battlefield of the mind: the ancient game of chess (el ajedrez).
In today's interactive Brain Warm-Up, your Thinkers will learn the secret superpowers of the chess pieces. We will weave in Spanish vocabulary to identify the Rook (la torre), the Bishop (el alfil), and the Knight (el caballo). We aren't just sitting still, either! We will be using tactile audio and physical movements to trace their straight, diagonal, and L-shaped paths through the air. Once our brains are warmed up, we will tackle some mental math subtraction based on speed-chess records and use our own fingers to calculate the matches in a mini-chess tournament bracket!
While your kids think they are just pretending to be knights and castles, they are actually getting an incredible cognitive workout. In this episode's "Parent Corner" at the very end of the show, we break down how learning chess movement constraints builds "inhibitory control" and working memory. We also explain how our finger-pairing tournament puzzle visually and physically introduces children to exponential division and logarithmic scaling.
Grab your kids, turn up the volume, and see if you can solve the riddles of the Checkered Kingdom together! Check back for another chess-themed episode on Thursday for our weekly brain bender!