Camps
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New website at www.learnerschess.org
February 25th and 26th Single Day Camps
Morning, afternoon, or full day.
532 Adams NE
Friday March 25th single day option
Monday-Friday March 28th-April 1st.
At Learners HQ, 532 Adams NE
Summer Chess Camp at UNM School of Law
Most weeks of summer available!
Summer Chess Camp at St. Thomas School in Rio Rancho.
June 6th-10th.
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Click here to see the Top 10 Reasons to Sign up for LCA Chess Camp and click here to learn about and sign up for Summer Chess Camp 2015!
About Learners' Week-Long Camps
Our typical schedule for a day at chess camp includes:
Start at 9am.
Warm up by playing chess with coaches and other campers for 15-30 minutes.
Around 9:30 we start our structured lessons which typically accompany a relevant practice exercise. This could include a lecture or a briefing on a lesson. In all of our lessons we introduce new vocabulary words, chess concepts, and thinking strategies, and of course actual examples from chess games. During themed weeks, we will use historical examples games from that week's theme to teach the universal concept that we aim for the students to learn. For instance, if we are teaching checkmating tactics for a lesson during a week when we are focusing on the Romantic Era of Chess, we will show checkmating tactics from games of players during the Romantic Era of Chess and we will pull our exercises for that week largely from Romantic Era chess games. When students master a given chess exercises they earn stamps on their name tag. At the end of the week students may use their stamps to buy chess prizes or candy. We make sure each student is attempting chess exercises that are appropriately challenging yet achievable for their skill level.
At approximately 10:30 we go out for a recess and snack. The snack is usually some kind of fruit, water or juice, or a Nutri-Grain bar. Recess is for 30 minutes. Recess is supervised on a field and/or playground where we usually play capture the flag and/or play more chess and other games like bug-house, tag, basketball, soccer, and any any other games of our imaginations.
After recess, we have another structured lesson and exercise that compliments or appropriately contrasts with the one we did before recess.
Time permitting, we end the session allowing our chess students to play regular chess and/or fun versions of chess like bug-house chess, four kings, Super Bughouse, team chess, closed universe chess, or circle chess.
Morning Chess Campers get picked up at 12:30 pm.
Full Day Chess Campers have lunch with the coaches (bring your own lunch) and then the afternoon campers arrive at 1:30 pm and the same schedule is followed with different lessons and exercises that tailor to that specific group of chess learners. Sometimes we play team chess, look at famous grand-master chess games, and learn popular chess openings.
On Fridays, we have more time for fun chess variants, puzzle solving for earning stamps, we have an auction for prizes, and we play a Learners Chess Academy original chess variant called Super Bughouse.
The day ends and all campers should be picked up by 5:00pm.
On the last day of camp, each camper will receive a Learners Chess Academy tee-shirt and prizes.
Before and After care may be available upon request.
Practicing the "two bishop checkmate."
Enjoying recess!