Homeschool Crew Review: Fun Family Chess

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We have an opportunity to review a wide variety of products from the Homeschool Crew.  My children absolutely love it when we get games.  We were very excited to have a chance to use and review Fun Family Chess from Brain Blox.


Have you ever wanted to learn to play chess but it seems complicated and intimidating?  Maybe your children want to learn to play but you do not know how to teach them.  Fun Family Chess is just what you need.

Fun Family Chess comes with:

15 in Wooden Folding Chess Board to play on and store everything in
32 Wooden Chess Pieces
Full Color Instructions
Chess Cube
2 reference cards
Soft Pouches to store Chess Pieces
Links to videos for those who learn better by watching

What is the difference between standard chess and Fun Family Chess?  In Fun Family Chess you roll a chess cube that tells you what piece you need to move.  If you can't move that piece because your piece is blocked or you no longer have it, you roll the dice again.  The reference card tells you how to move that particular piece.  Also, you win the game by capturing the opponents king rather then putting the king in "checkmate."

You can play standard chess with the Fun Family Chess set.  There are instructions in the booklet on how to play standard chess once you master the Fun Family Chess.  The instructions talk about the differences in the games and gives instructions on how to put a king in check and checkmate, pawn promotion, en passant, and castling. There are also tips and strategies for standard chess in the back of the booklet.

My older teenage boys know how to play chess and play it very well.  But while they are willing to show their younger siblings how to play, they are not willing to share chess strategies and always win which frustrated the younger children and made them not want to play.  I think chess is a lot of fun and a great game that teaches strategy and critical thinking skills.  So I was excited to see Fun Family Chess and hoped it would help my 3 younger children feel like they could tackle chess too.

The first time they played I wasn't at home.  But my children being used to product reviews gave me a report when I returned.  Christian said ," It was great mom.  The board and the pieces are good quality and you'll like how everything folds up and is stored together. The game itself is lots of fun.  The directions are easy to follow and we liked having the dice tell us what to do instead of having to think up the moves on our own.  The card showed us how we needed to move the pieces."

Christian knows me so well.  One of my favorite things about the set is the quick and easy clean up.  The children put the pieces in the pouches and store everything back inside the board.

Since that day they have played several games of  Fun Family Chess.  They have not moved on to playing the standard game together yet but they have learned a lot about the game of chess and have had fun doing it!  I think this is a winner from Brain Blox!

To see what my Crew Mates had to say, stop by the Crew Blog!