McKinley takes K-3 at Evangel

Another 1st for McKinley

Great job to Jack, Zach, and Matthew who took 1st place in the Evangel Chess Tournament on Saturday 2/25!  Jack also won an individual trophy.  Alex just missed an individual trophy in the K-6 division.  Great effort by the small team we had at Evangel.  Coming up - Butler next weekend, then Elmwood on 3/11,  See email for details.

Still trying to fill K-3 and K-6 teams for Evangel!

See the link to the upper-right of this site to register!   Need 2 more for K-3 and 3 for K-6!

REMINDER: Butler Middle School tournament is coming up on March 4th... if we miss you at Evangel, see you there!

Isabella and Meghan Represent McKinley at All Girls

Wisconsin All Girls 2017 Tournament (WSCF)

For some reason, proportionally more boys choose to play chess than girls.  OF COURSE, this does not mean boys are "better" at chess.  Once a year, the WSCF has a tournament just for girls.  This Saturday Feb 11, two of McKinley's 4th grade girl chess players - Meghan and Isabella - represented McKinley at this tournament.  Because they had done so well in previous tournaments, they had to play in the K-12 division against girls as old as 12th grade!  They did very well, each winning 2 games in the tournament.  Way to go GIRLS!

Upcoming Tournaments

Here are the upcoming tournaments to consider- the big ones are noted in asterisks!

• Feb 11 - All Girls (WSCF) - university school of Milwaukee 
• Feb 25 - Evangel Assembly of God (WSCF)
• March 4 - Butler Middle School (WSCF)
• March 18-19 - STATE SCHOLASTIC - K5 - UW Oshkosh *****
• March 25 - March of Champions (WSCF)
• April 1 - Grade Level (WSCF) - UW Milwaukee Union *****
• April 22 - Kalahari - state class championship - Wis Dells

The big tournaments are the state scholastic at UWO, and Grade Level at UWM.  Details will be emailed to parents, and all WSCF tournament details are found at wisconsinscholasticchess.com

McKinley Shines at Golda Meir

Congrats to McKinley elementary chess club for a solid showing at Golda Meir on Sat Feb 4!

Way to go kids!

The Golda Meir tournament is a fun annual event.  This year, over 170 kids from the Milwaukee area participated.  McKinley sent 8 kids this time around, and were divided into two divisions.  Some chess tournaments segment kids by rating as well as grade level.

We always tell kids that their goal in their first tournament is to win 1 game (out of the 5 usually played).  5 of our 8 kids were playing in their first tournament.  Not only did they all win at least 2 games, but 3 of them won 4 games.

Zach Brunow had to miss game 1 due to basketball, but then joined in and won all four of his games- in his first tournament!  The rest of our K4 team (3 out of 4 in their first tournament) all won 3/5 games... we missed first place by a HALF POINT, taking the 3rd place trophy.

In our other team, K12 U575, Alex Jaworski won 4 out of 5 games to take the 4th place individual trophy.  Jack Sanders also won 4 games.  We took 4th as a team, only 2 points away from 1st place.

All in all, a great day and a very fun and well organized tournament, way to go McKinley kids!

Full results are here-  http://www.wisconsinscholasticchess.org/websource/web/results/Golda%20Meir%20Results%20.pdf

Improving outside of class

I tell kids all the time, you can't get good at something by doing it wrong, over and over again.  

Kids need to do lessons and videos, and workouts, and puzzles to see how to do it right.  THEN play games and tournaments to demonstrate what they have learned - and for it to sink in.  If they don't do well in games/ tournaments, it is because they have not "put in the work!"   As a fellow chess parent, I'd like to ask you all to consider motivating your kids to do the work.  Reward them.  Or treat it like studying rather than "video games" or "Screen time"...

Here is what kids should focus on:

LEARNING: 

• ChessKid.com - Lessons!  They should progress through the online lessons.  They are targeted to kids and are fun!
• ChessKid.com - Videos!  Also lots of fun, and very instructional
• Books - many great chess books out there.  Chess for Dummies is actually really good.

PRACTICE:

• ChessKid.com - Workouts!  Great common positions for kids to practice.
• ChessKid.com - Online games - play others in the class!
• ChessKid.com - Vision - practice "seeing the board" - learn chess notation so you can learn from your games!

DEMONSTRATING WHAT YOU LEARNED:

• ChessKid.com - PUZZLES!  Lots of fun - work on your puzzle rating!
• Tournaments!   Next one is Golda Meir
• Ladder Games in class

Golda Meir Registration:

Here is my link to register for the Golda Meir tournament on Feb 4!

Each school has different ideas about how to group the players.  This one has a K-4 group for kids in K-4 grades who have a WSCF rating under 500, then the other groups are solely by rating (under 500, under 800 and OPEN (any rating)).

Your child has a rating if and only if they played in the Wauwatosa Catholic tournament recently.  If they did, you can look up their ratings by going to THIS LINK and finding your child and looking at the "Local" rating number.  This will determine what division you will need to select.

There is more description in the registration link.  Just choose a division if you're unsure and I will adjust later based on who we have going to the tournament.