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The sequel to ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park is here: ChessPa Activity Books!

by Sagar Shah - 14/11/2023

After the success of the ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park Children's Books, this children's day we are launching the ChessPa Activity Books. The idea of these three activity books is to supplement the material that the kids would learn in the ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park book. With activities like colouring the objects, joining the dots, circling the correct answers, these 3 workbooks prove to be the perfect way for kids to practically learn about chess in a fun and engaging way from the age of 3 years! What do these activity books contain and how did we come up with this idea, is explained in the article below. You can pre-order the books today and it will be launched on 11th of December 2023.

ChessPa Activity Books are here!

IM Sagar Shah talks about ChessPa Activity Books!

On 14th of November 2022, exactly a year ago we launched ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park - a children's chess book. With cartoons and the story revolving around the central character of ChessPa, a lot of young kids loved the book!

The Book ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park was loved by one and all

The book was illustrated by Ketaki Kulkarni and conceptualized by Amruta Mokal and Sagar Shah. It was published by ChessBase India. It was the first book that we ever published. Whenever you do something new, it is always a bit stressful. Will the book do well? Will people like it? Will we be able to sell the books? Of course, these were some of the questions we had when we launched the book. But one thing was very clear in our mind - there needed to be a resource out there where the parents/teachers could introduce the beautiful game of chess in a fun way. While there are videos and softwares available for this, we felt that a book would be the right way to go. Parents are always looking for good quality books to read out to their little ones, even as young as 1-year-olds. So why not read from a chess book? :) The entire story of how ChessPa came into existence has been laid out in detail here. Over the year we sold close to 2000 copies of the book across the world and we received quite wonderful reviews. We compiled some of them together and published them here.

From little kids...

...to elders...

...to super GMs! Everyone liked the ChessPa character!

ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park reviewed by our good friend IAS Swapnil Tembe. You can check out the video here.

It was clear to us right from the beginning that ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park would not be the only ChessPa book that we would work on. We were sure that it would be a series of books. But we wanted to be very aware of the feedback we received from our customers. One of the feedbacks we received quite consistently was that ChessPa has ignited the interest of chess in my kids - is there some kind of an activity book that we could get. Something the kids could interact with, work with, gain deeper understanding of chess and get more immersed in it. It was with this in mind that we decided to launch 3 activity books that would supplement well with the main ChessPa book. But there was one thing that we wanted the activity book to be - creative! Filled with innovative ideas that would make the kids fall in love with chess. And this we believe we managed to do! :)

The ChessPa activity books

The 3 ChessPa Activity Books with each book having 25-30 pages

How did we decide to come up with 3 activity books? The idea was to divide the learning of basics of chess in three parts. The first activity book deals with the pieces in chess and how the chess board is arranged. This is ideal for kids who are 3 years old. The second activity book deals with how each of the pieces move. This is ideal for kids who are 4 years old. And finally the third book for kids who are 5 years old and it deals with the concepts of check, checkmate, stalemate, castling, pawn promotion, en-passant etc. Of course, the age of 3 years for book 1, 4 years for book 2 and 5 years for book 3 are just indicative. It is quite possible that your son/daughter is prodigious and finishes them within a few days as well! 

ChessPa Activity Book Level 1

The first level of ChessPa Activity Book

Topics:

1. World of Chess

2. Let's Meet the Rook (2 pages)

3. Let's meet the Bishop (2 pages)

4. Let's meet the Queen (2 pages)

5. Let's meet the Knight (2 pages)

6. Let's meet the King (2 pages)

7. Let's meet the Pawn (2 pages)

8. All pieces - Revision (2 pages)

9. The Chess Board

10. Files, Ranks and Diagonals (2 pages)

11. Understanding the squares

12. Arranging chess pieces (2 pages)

13. Complete revision - Chess Pieces

14. Complete revision - Arranging pieces on board (2 pages)

15. Fun Sheet (2 pages)

16. Answers (2 pages)

A sample page from Part 1 of the activity book that teaches about Rook. You have to colour the rook and tell how many rooks are there on the board for each side

ChessPa activity Book Level 2

The second level of ChessPa Activity Book

Topics:

1. Value of chess pieces

2. Value of chess pieces - Big or small

3. How a rook moves (3 pages)

4 .How a bishop moves (3 pages)

5. How a queen moves (4 pages)

6. How a king moves (3 pages)

7. How a pawn moves (4 pages)

8. How a knight moves (4 pages)

9. Rules of chess

10. Fun Sheet (2 pages)

11. Answers (2 pages)

A sample from part II of the activity book that teaches about how a king moves. How many watermelons can the king eat? Towards the bottom of the page you will see that the students have to trace the word KING.

ChessPa activity book level 3

The third level of ChessPa Activity book

Topics:

1. Find the value of pieces (2 pages)

2. Notations (2 pages)

3. Check (3 pages)

4. Illegal moves 

5. Checkmate (2 pages)

6. Stalemate (2 pages)

7. Pawn promotion (2 pages)

8. Castling (4 pages)

9. En passant (4 pages)

10. Fun pages (2 pages)

11. Answers

As you can see, the idea of the third level book is to not just teach the kids the value of pieces, but also make them stronger in mathematics!

How should these books be used?

We made these activity books in a way that you can order them and when you receive them, the kids can immediately start working on them. You can be a guide to your kids as they navigate through the material in the book. You do not need to be a chess expert, as all the concepts are quite self explanatory and the answers are given at the end of the book.

 

At the same time we are keen that we can introduce ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park + the activity books as a syllabus in nurseries and kindergartens. Instead of the activity books, the each page can be converted into individual sheets that can be given to kids every week. For eg. the first book is ideal for kids going to nurseries and they get 1 sheet per week. There are roughly 26 sheets. This would mean that they would complete the entire level 1 activity book in their year of nursery. The second level can be introduced in the form of sheets in lower kindergarten and the third level for the senior kindergarten. If you are an institution and desirious of implementing chess as a syllabus then you can write to us at chessbaseindia@gmail.com and we will help you.

If you already have the main ChessPa in the Chess Adventure Park book, then you can go for the three activity books at the Combo price of Rs.499/- You would save Rs.250 here as each of the activity book is individually priced at Rs.250.

If you have not bought any of the ChessPa books, then you can get the entire combo of the main ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park book and the three activity books for just Rs.999/-

If you order three activity books together (for Rs.499/-) or the entire combo for Rs.999/- you will get this sheet of stickers free with it, which can be put on every page that is solved by the kids!

Order the books now

The illustrator of the book is Ketaki Kulkarni, who has played a major role to make these books possible. Being a mother of 3-year-old Kaveri, a fantastic illustrator and strong chess player (Elo:2005) Ketaki has the perfect skillset to work on these books.

Amruta's usual mood after working for several hours on the book! Without her efforts, these books would have never seen the day of light.

Amruta and Ketaki working together on the ChessPa project

Niklesh Jain is currently working on the Hindi Translation of all the ChessPa books. So they will be available in Hindi as well! We hope to translate in all the major Indian languages in future.

Description of the books:

After the success of ChessPa in Chess Adventure Park, we are here with a series of Chess Activity Books for you! We believe Chess is getting younger day-by-day and to make chess learning a fun experience, what better way than getting your favourite crayons and learning chess, one activity sheet at a time! After you have finished one activity, don’t forget to give yourself a star and say “Never Give Up!” as that’s the quote ChessPa lives by. The activity sheets should be used to practice and reinforce the lessons learnt. After learning each concept on a chessboard, kids can use these sheets with some assistance of an adult.

Pre-Order the books from the ChessBase India shop

(Launch date: 11th of December 2023 - Vishy Anand's birthday)



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