How this all started.
Sunday August 20th, 2000
Monday August 21st, 2000
Tuesday August 22nd, 2000
Thursday August 24th, 2000
Sunday August 27th, 2000
FYI, this week, Melanie, Justice and I are travelling. We will certainly do some chess work, but likely not much. If anything really nifty happens, I will be sure to update this page. However, I expect that nothing will be updated here until Monday September 4th. Sorry to anyone who is watching...
Thursday September 14th, 2000

     First of all, I should say that we are trying to teach Justice three things currently: reading, math and chess. Yes, chess. At the time of this writing, he is 25.5 months old - just a little over two years. This may all seem a little ambitious, but, read on and find out why we think it is actually quite reasonable.
     Several years ago, I discovered that my dad had a book in his collection called How to Teach Your Baby to Read. I pilfered the book from my dad and lugged it around while I moved from place to place for several years. Eventually, I got married and actually had a baby. At various times I remembered the book, but I didn't actually do anything about it. Until Justice got to be about fourteen months old. I read the book and was so inspired at points that I couldn't contain my joy. I'm talking about a big lump in my throat, tears, uncontrolled laughing, and jumping around!
     Suffice it to say, I set about actually trying to put it into practice. I used my computer and printer to make the big block letter cards that the book recommends, starting with "MAMA" and "DADA" in 288 point Helvetica. To make a long story short, it didn't take long until he definately recognized about forty words. I spent about five minutes a day on this and was very inconsistant - I only sort-of followed the book's instructions. Being aware of some basic scientific principles, I made sure to randomize the order the words were presented, and to test his knowledge and understanding. He could speak the word when shown it, could point to the object it represented (for example if shown "VACUUM" he would run and get his toy vacuum), and could pick out a requested word from a small random pile of words.
     But then after the first couple of weeks, I started to seriously let the process slip. And eventually, after about two months, I dropped it alltogether. Bah! I'm kicking myself now. I came so close to failing in my sacred duty as a parent. Over the intervening months, until a couple of days ago, I had a nagging feeling of guilt and loss because I had neglected to do the work properly.
     Now, in the last few days, two things have happened that have rekindled my interest in this and motivated both myself and Melanie (my wife) to start this process again, with even more vigor. First of all, on Friday night (Aug. 18, 2000), we went to a bookstore. Melanie was researching home schooling and came across another of Glen Doman's books called How to Teach Your Baby Math. Well, lets just say that she is obsessed. She has just finished a BA degree in developmental psychology so she has a clue about this stuff. One aspect of this system that has impressed her is the idea that children learn rules most effectively by learning facts. Their brains are incredibly good at extracting (subconciously) the rules in a domain. The best example is language: children learn their native language and all its complicated pronounciation, syntactic and sematic rules and exceptions incredibly quickly and perfectly. And without any formal "rule teaching" until well after they have reached mastery level (i.e. when they get into school and start to learn to write). Anyway, to considerably shorten the story, Melanie has taken on the challenge and is now systematically applying the method recommended in the book to teach Justice math and in a few days will return to the reading challenge as well.
     The second thing that has happened in the last few days is that Justice has taken a very strong interest in chess. I know that seems bizarre, but it actually has a fairly reasonable genesis. In July, Justice started watching the DVD, A Bug's Life (Special Edition). In the special edition package there is a second disk that has the animation short Geri's Game. This was shown, if I remember correctly, as a lead to the main feature. The basic setting of Geri's Game is at a chess table in a park. Justice must have watched this literaly a hundered times. It is only about five minutes and there were several days when we just put it on repeat and he sat and loved it. So last week, we were shopping in a mall and happened into one of those trendy we-sell-cool-around-the-house-stuff-and-executive-toys stores. At the back they had a few chess boards and Justice just went crazy - he really wanted to play. So we let him fiddle for a few moments and then we had to leave (his diaper was totally soaking and Melanie's back was really hurting).
     Then on Friday, at the book store mentioned above, I happed upon a big tome called, appropriately, Chess : 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games. As soon as Justice saw it, he kept saying "read chess? read chess?" and "chess board". I gave it to him and he actually started flipping through it. And he didn't get immediately bored by the thousands of chess problem diagrams. Still, I didn't think much of his interest at the time other than that it seemed a little unusual.
     Yesterday (Saturday) Melanie and I spent much of the day getting stuff for the math program. But again Justice showed some interest in the chess book so I let him flip through it. At the same time, I started to read some of the math book and to think about what I could teach Justice using an analogous method...

     But it didn't occur to me until this morning, when Justice yet again asked for the chess book, to seriously consider teaching him chess. I flipped open the book to its introduction to the pieces. I went through it very quickly with Justice, simply naming the pieces, pointing to their graphical symbols, and describing their behavior with words, the supplied diagrams, and my finger. Because of one of the strongest recommendations in the Doman books, I then immediately stopped and put the book away - before Justice became bored with it. He put up a little tantrum, but was calmed by being told that we would continue to learn chess later.
     We looked at the book a few more times. Each time I reviewed the pieces. Justice can now correctly identify the black and white pawns on the diagrams even though they are very small and not all that different from the symbols used for the bishops. This happened by accident. I was just pointing to pieces on the problem diagrams and naming them. Justice, of his own accord, pointed at the page and said "pawn". I hadn't been looking so I wasn't sure if he had actually pointed at a pawn. But then he did it several more times and even got more detailed by correctly pointing to "two white pawns" and saying exactly so.
     Doman's process really focuses on teaching facts as plainly and directly as possible, so this chess book is in some ways very well suited - all the problems are in essence chess facts. The one-move problems are simple, demonstrate the goal of checkmate, demonstrate a multitude of different moves, and have only one correct solution. The real problem is how to present these to Justice so that he can derive the rules. The chess book has all the solutions, but they are presented in notation rather than a before and after set of diagrams. So this evening Melanie and I discussed how seriously we should take this and what we should actually do.
     We decided that since Melanie was focusing on math and reading and is home with Justice the whole day, that I should probably have my own subject to teach him and chess seems like a nice one to start with. We figured out that we can make "one move chess problem cards": on one side is the problem position and on the reverse is the solution position. So tomorrow I will do a whole bunch of photocopying at work to make the images for the cards and we will see what happens...

     Today was a bit odd. Unfortunately, Melanie was sick during the night and so things were a bit out of sorts for the day. I ended up sleeping in. When I did wake up, around 10:30, Justice was up as well, and we did a quick bit with the chess book. Actually, really he just fiddled with the book and I watched. Because I had plans for cards, I didn't really want to bore him with going over the names of the pieces again. Besides, he quickly proved that I didn't need to: he opened the book and pointed at a rook and said "wrook" (that's my rendering of how it sounded - he's still young enough that his pronunciation isn't all that great). So that was a good morning gift from him to me. I packed up the book and headed off to work.
     On the way to work I phoned my best friend Jesse and told him about Justice's newest accomplishments (actually, I got him to read the above two journal entries :). Ahhhh... bragging is such fun :) He was duly impressed.
     At work I made a bunch of copies of a board and the pieces. On the back of the chess book is a nice image of a board rendered in the same manner as the diagrams for the problems except that it is in the initial position and it is much bigger (and therefore more suitable for enlarging and photocopying). I measured it to be 3.5" (normally I work in centimeters, being from Canada) on a side. I needed boards that were 5" on a side to fit the cards that Melanie was going to make for me. So I did the percentage calculation, programmed the photocopier and made two enlarged copies. I then did a little cutting and pasting (actually scotch-taping) in order to produce one empty board (no pieces) and eight rows of pieces, four black, four white. Then I made thirty copies each of these two items.
     Once home I started to make the cards. The basic idea I had was to put the problem setup diagram on one side and on the other the solution. I started to cut and paste... and boy-o-boy did it take a long time to do the first card. It didn't help that I had made some mistakes in my photocopying and that I had chosen a problem (#1) with quite a few pieces on the board. I just wasn't thinking very clearly. On the solution side I also used a yellow highlighter to highlight the piece that had moved: a queen. I did eventually finish the first card.
     I told Justice that I was going to show him his chess card. I showed him the problem side and said something stupid to the effect, "White has to move to kill the black king." Gack! Anyway, I flipped it over and did a little better, "White has moved the queen and now the black king is checkmated." Then I gave him the card. He was very intent. He immediately pointed at the highlighted queen and said "white queen". I was very impressed since I hadn't told him what it was or pointed at it myself. He also said "queen moved" but I don't really know if he understood. After that short chance to touch the card, I took it away and told him that we would do more later. Doman makes it really clear that parents should always anticipate the loss of the child's interest and make sure that the materials are taken away while the child is still really happy and having fun with them. This intensifies their desire to work with the materials more.
     After Justice went to bed, Melanie helped me by doing the cutting and we made four more cards. I'm now trying to be a little more systematic about how I present them. All of them are simpler than the first one (only four or five pieces in the problem). The problems are "easy" in that the move is quite obvious to someone who knows the rules - my wife who is an extreme novice (once reminded of the moves for the pieces) figured out the solutions to all of them. One is a knight move, one is a bishop move, and two are rook moves. I have to get my presentation a little more polished. And tomorrow morning we will hopefully look at two more.
     I also need to figure out when I will introduce him to a real chess board (probably very soon) and when I will introduce him to some good chess software (probably after he learns how to use the mouse better :).

     Today wasn't nearly as productive as the previous two days. For one thing, I left for work just as Justice woke up in the morning. For another thing, I was very tired and had a huge headache when I got home. However, there were still some interesting bits and some bits that should just be recorded "for the record".
     At work I corrected a deficiency in my previous day's photocopying by getting a bunch of king and queen icons on the appropriate board square color (king on color, queen on opposite color). They don't look as good as the other pieces because they were enlarged by over 300% - I had to take them from some of the problem diagrams which are much smaller than the board on the back of the book.
     Also while at work, Melanie phoned to tell me that she had purchased a wooden chess board for Justice. Apparently they went to ToysRUs. It is quite nice: very solid board and pieces and the pieces are reasonably shaped. Justice loves it. Mostly he just puts the pieces on and off and moves them randomly, but he knows what a pawn is.
     When I got home, he immediately took my hand and pulled me into the dining room to see the chess board. He wanted me to play chess with him. I set up the pieces properly and then started a very pretend game. He wanted to be white and so I told him to move first. He moved a2 to b4 - not exactly legal :) but a good try. It degenerated from there, although I have decided that I will always make legal moves even if he isn't, just to set a good example.
     I also showed him two chess cards. The first one I spent some time on and even set up on the chess board. He enjoyed that quite a bit. The second one I simply showed to him extremely quickly. He played with the chess board a little more throughout the evening and that was it.

     Again there was a pretty serious lull in our efforts. On Friday it was due to working and then we had visitors in the evening - some new friends we have made who are from Paris, France. They stayed until Justice's bedtime so we did not have a chance to do our chess cards nor to play. Saturday was similar: the day was taken up with errands out of the house and then visiting in the evening.
     Today, however, was good in a couple of ways. In the morning, I quickly grabbed the four new problem cards and flipped through them with Justice. He was very interested (or at least he paid close attention). Unfortunately I presented them improperly: I showed him the solution first and then the problem meanwhile I was talking as if it was the other way around. This is one problem with the cards - there is no quick way of telling which side is which. Perhaps I will color code the edges... Anyway, I decided not to mention anything about the mistake to Justice. I would rather he be excited about learning chess than have one little mistake on my part screw things up.
     I went into work for a while today. When I returned, we watched Babe which is a very nice movie. I have to admit I cried at the end. It is so simple yet so happy. If you like feel-good movies, I highly recommend it. Anyway... After we watched it, I did another round of chess cards with Justice. Again he paid very close attention. I asked him if he would like to play chess with me and he did so we set up the board a couple of times :) I also did a set of numbers with him (the math program that Melanie is doing) and a set of words (the reading program). The main thing is that I try to be very enthusiastic and very quick so that he is interested and so that he doesn't get bored.
     Tonight I have to make two more chess problems at least, and preferably more. It is going to be a very long process of teaching him. My dad, Garry, read my previous day's notes and we talked about this a bit. He suggested that I find or make a very large chess set with pieces about half Justice's height. This will make the game more substantial and even more tactile (and kinesthetic as well). I would like to make one, but I probably won't until I return home to Elmvale (for those who don't know, I am currently doing a contract for Charles Schwab in San Francisco, but I live in a small town near Toronto in Canada). I will however ask around to see if anyone knows about one in the bay area (if you, dear reader, happen to know of one, please email me about it, thanks).