Scouts develop their critical thinking and strategy skills while doing the requirements for the Chess merit badge. They learn the history of chess, and chess notation. Scouts familiarize themselves with the tactics, board, pieces, and moves. Then they demonstrate their skills by playing some games of chess.
Do you feel like you always lose when you play chess? If you are better at getting your own pieces captured than capturing your opponents pieces, then Antichess is the game for you. In Antichess (sometimes called Suicide Chess or Giveaway Chess) the object is to lose all of your pieces.
The latest Scouts BSA requirements for Tenderfoot and Life ranks require the Scout to use the EDGE method. This is a four step method for teaching a skill. It is sometimes called Scouting’s Teaching EDGE.
Bughouse (or Bunk House) is a game which helps even the playing field. Basically, there are two teams which simultaneously play chess together. Each player has a direct opponent, but when he captures a piece, he passes it to one of his teammates to play on the board. The key is to have the direct opponents as evenly matched as possible and then to have the teams fairly well balanced in skill level.
Designed to Crunch is the Scouts BSA Nova Award for mathematics. To earn this award, Scouts must complete one of their mathematics related merit badges and learn about related topics such as calculating horsepower, statistics for athletics events, and star counts.
Do you think regular chess is boring? Then try atomic chess. In atomic chess, pieces don't just capture other pieces, they explode! Both pieces involved in the capture are destroyed along with any in the surrounding area. Sound like fun?
I always go over terminology first when introducing something new to Cub Scouts. This is a good practice for Scouts BSA and Venturers to learn also whenever they are doing skill instruction. So if you are having a chess themed meeting or activity, make sure you are all speaking the same language first. These are some very basic definitions to get you started.
The Chess merit badge for Scouts BSA has requirements related to using chess notation and recording chess games. If you are not familiar with chess notation, this might seem a little daunting, but it really is pretty easy to learn.
Since I am featuring a chess theme this month, I thought I'd suggest making a checkerboard cake which will look similar to a chess board when sliced as a snack to go along with this theme. One easy way to make a checkerboard cake is with a special checkerboard cake pan.
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