The Montessori School

Chess club is a fun and rewarding place to learn, grow, make new friends, and engage in friendly competition. For interested players, each club will organize a chess team to compete against other chess teams from other schools in the region of the metro area and against teams from the greater Central New Mexico area.

We have lessons, exercises, and puzzles for all ranges of players from absolute beginners to the experienced tournament players.

All levels of chess players are welcome. We encourage 2nd graders and up to join. 1st graders and Kindergartners may join if you, their parents or guardians, can attest that they have adequate experience in a classroom environment and/or already know how to play chess and you are confident they can keep up with the older kids. About 90% of the time, Kindergarteners are not ready for chess club and could use another year or two of classroom learning experience before joining chess. The risk of starting them too early is that they will get frustrated and lose interest in the game all together.

If your young Learner is an absolute beginner, please have them spend some time on lichess.org/learn# and/or copy and paste the below link into a new window or browser and print out our piece movement booklet and have your beginning chess Learner work on it before our first chess club. It is also has some puzzles at the end that can benefit returning players who are still working to master the basics.
http://tinyurl.com/gsu5zfb

Please note, that our chess club needs to meet a minimum enrollment requirement of at least 12 students before we can guarantee that it will go forward. If we do need to cancel your club, we will refund you any payment you made for it.

If we reach a maximum number of kids in the club, registration will close. You may email us to get on a waiting list for the club and if we can find enough space and another instructor, we will open more spots to include more students.

Sibling discounts are $10 for each additional child after the first and will automatically be applied to your total when you register your second child.

If you need to apply for a need-based scholarship, select the pay in full option and then select need-based scholarship application in the payment method and then after finalizing your completed registration, a link to the application will be available in your confirmation email.