St. Christopher's by-the-Sea School in Key Biscayne

Hello my friends!

My family and I recently moved to the wonderful island of Key Biscayne. It's a very quiet and peaceful island with a beautiful lighthouse. This island is sometimes called the island paradise. The Sony Ericsson Open takes place every Spring here, and people are trying to be in shape, so everywhere you can see everybody doing exercise.

There are many schools on our island. I was invited today to make a chess presentation to the St. Christopher’s by-the-Sea Montessori School, where starting at the beginning of this year a chess club was created. So I came to visit this school and gave 5 presentation lessons from Pre-Kindergarten to Upper Elementary.

Everybody had a very good time, even the smallest kids were very interested about hearing about the game of chess.

I was not the only one to visit the kids, a very special visitor from the Chess Kingdom came to meet the children as well, my little assistant the Queen puppet. And the kids liked her very much.

My puppet's name is Her Majesty the Queen, and she told the kids many interesting things about Chess and the Chess Kingdom. What surprised me a lot that in every class I asked where the White Queen is supposed to start the game. And in every class I got the answer "White" and when I asked "Why?", the answer was "Because she is White, she likes her color"! And these kids didn't even know all the rules of the game!

The older students enjoyed a "more serious" approach to the topic. But they also took a very active part in the lesson.

So I was very happy that everything went so well. And I hope to hear more news about these kids since with such interest and enthusiasm there is a great potential for the chess club to have many talented young chess players.

After these lessons I went to pick-up my my daughter from Pre-School (isn't it amazing how time flies?) and we went together to the grocery store.

Don't you think that we look alike? ;)

To end this post here is a small combination from one of my blitz-games for you to solve:

Black just played 24. ... h5, what is the strongest move for White right now?

Posted by: Alexandra Kosteniuk

Women's World Chess Champion

www.chessblog.com