The Pit

The Pit! This is a hole that you can fall into when a problem you are having gets out of control.  If you are feeling angry, confused, nervous, sad, or stressed, sometimes all these feelings can build up and put you in the pit.  You go from being very happy, and then maybe you are confused that you have a problem, and before you know it, you're in the pit.  You can get out of the pit by having strategies to help you.  These will help you climb out slowly.  One of the best strategies is asking for help, or telling someone about how you are feeling.

Can I please be the spare Queen?

Today at Enrich we played some chess.  I went with Katie to have a battle on the GIANT chess board!  There were quite a few kids, so we split into teams.  I was on the white team.  My first question topiKatie was "Can I please be the spare Queen?"  Katie reminded us not to set up whole lines of chess pieces - it's not a good plan.  Also, we had to think where we were putting each piece, and tell Katie what our game plan was.  I got to go first!  My opening move was to move the Queen's pawn forward one space - this made room for my bishop to get out.  By the end of the 20 minutes, our team had the white team in trouble! We had our Rook in position, backed up by the Queen.  We were only a few moves away from checkmate!  The answer to Katie's question was "Yes - if we need a spare Queen, you will have to jump on the chessboard!"

Chess

Today at Enrich we did some chess lessons with Katie. We could choose to do an advanced lesson with Darryn or a beginner lesson with Katie. I went to Katie's lesson. In Katie's lesson we spit into two teams.  I was on Katie's team - white.  Katie showed us how she starts her game of chess and gave us tips along the way.  The game kind of started getting interesting.  She said that you have to make sure you back up your players with another piece so that they are guarded. We all had turns to move a piece.  We had to say why we were moving the piece to certain locations.  You had to keep thinking ahead!