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        Arimaa >> General Discussion >> Teaching Children?
        
(Message started by: Nombril on Jan 13th, 2010, 6:48pm)
Title: Teaching Children?
Post by Nombril on Jan 13th, 2010, 6:48pm
Has anyone tried to teach the game to younger children?  My 3 year old asked me today if I would teach them to play Arimaa.  I'm wondering if I should start with any rules modifications, such as leaving out freezing weaker pieces.  Though maybe I should start with checkers?!?!
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by Arimabuff on Jan 14th, 2010, 7:19am
I know for a fact that you can learn Chess at 5 but 3 may be a little early (unless he has a 150 plus IQ in which case he's laready 5 in his head.  ;))

Anyway, try Checkers or Othello and see how it goes.
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by ChrisB on Jan 14th, 2010, 8:35am
I don't know ... maybe you could start out with just rabbits, say six (per side).  I think that gold could win quickly, but it may take a three-year-old quite a while to master that.  Once your child solves six-rabbit-arimaa, maybe a game with just the elephant and rabbits would be fun ... kind of like Omar and Aamir playing chess with just the king and pawns when Aamir was four.
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 14th, 2010, 9:02am
Wow, three is very young.  I would start with Candyland, to teach taking turns and following rules.  Next I would move to Connect Four or five-in-a-row (gomoku).  I disagree with the suggested age for Arimaa that Z-man put on the box, i.e. 12+, but the suggestion I voted for on Board Game Geek was 6+.  My hesitation about teaching Arimaa to younger children is partly the complexity of the rules, but mostly about patience and discipline.
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by RonWeasley on Jan 14th, 2010, 9:24am
Remind them that when an animal gets trapped it goes to a farm where there's plenty of its favorite food and people are there to give it love.  Don't mention that the health care was designed by the US Congress.
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by megajester on Jan 14th, 2010, 9:52am
When I was little I spent every Tuesday afternoon at my grandparents, and my chess-&-bridge-enthusiast grandfather taught me chess. I have only a hazy recollection so I don't know how many sessions it took him. I was 3 1/2 at the time I'm told. I don't claim to have been a child prodigy or anything, I'm quite sure that with enough patience and the right approach it can be done with any 3-year-old.

Of course with chess you have to explain crazy stuff like L-shaped-jumping knight movements, castling and en passant. Arimaa's much easier, all the pieces move the same.

The animal names are colourful and the relative strengths are logical, but with chess it's a bunch of weird words that don't mean anything... I remember finding it amusing that church leaders are named after a chess piece :)

Also you don't need to have a fantastic sense of imagination to make concepts like trapsquares and freezing vivid and fun for little kids. ("Now look, the little rabbit doesn't fall in the trap because he's got his friend standing next to him. But if his friend goes away... whoops! Oh no! Poor little rabbit! Mustn't do thaat!")

I think Arimaa is a fantastic way to introduce the little 'uns to abstract strategy.
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by Nombril on Jan 14th, 2010, 10:53am
Thanks for all of the ideas.  A little extra background: She does play some games already, Candy Land, Uno, Memory, etc.  I'm guessing Arimaa (or at least something that superficially looks like it) will have some extra draw for her since she sees me playing it.
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by ocmiente on Jan 14th, 2010, 11:25am
My son is a little older than that at 6 years old, but he has been playing with chess pieces for a few years now.  I hesitate to say that he can play chess, but he does know all the rules pretty well.  

I've also taught him how to play Arimaa.  Last night, he got a little frustrated by how his rabbit was getting frozen by my cat on the penultimate row.  He said that he should probably learn to play chess better first before playing Arima any more.  I though it was funny that he thought that chess would be much simpler .

As far as how to teach kids Arimaa, I don't know the best way.  I've tried severe handicaps, which is OK, but I'm not very happy with that since I'm not sure he's getting the full experience.  What I'm doing now is that I use the full number of pieces, and we switch sides whenever my son wants to - so he always wins - which he likes a lot - and he learns how to move the pieces to the goal at the end.
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by Arimabuff on Jan 14th, 2010, 11:57am

on 01/14/10 at 09:24:13, RonWeasley wrote:
...Don't mention that the health care was designed by the US Congress.

As opposed to what was in place before?  ::)

Maybe it'd be wise to leave politics out of this forum...
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by Arimabuff on Jan 14th, 2010, 12:04pm

on 01/14/10 at 11:25:16, ocmiente wrote:
My son is a little older than that at 6 years old, but he has been playing with chess pieces for a few years now.  I hesitate to say that he can play chess, but he does know all the rules pretty well.  

I've also taught him how to play Arimaa.  Last night, he got a little frustrated by how his rabbit was getting frozen by my cat on the penultimate row.  He said that he should probably learn to play chess better first before playing Arima any more.  I though it was funny that he thought that chess would be much simpler .

As far as how to teach kids Arimaa, I don't know the best way.  I've tried severe handicaps, which is OK, but I'm not very happy with that since I'm not sure he's getting the full experience.  What I'm doing now is that I use the full number of pieces, and we switch sides whenever my son wants to - so he always wins - which he likes a lot - and he learns how to move the pieces to the goal at the end.

That's not bad! Maybe when he gets better, he can have that option only once in the game or at most every five moves, so he must learn to evaluate how bad/good the position has become.
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by Fritzlein on Jan 14th, 2010, 1:12pm

on 01/14/10 at 11:25:16, ocmiente wrote:
What I'm doing now is that I use the full number of pieces, and we switch sides whenever my son wants to - so he always wins - which he likes a lot - and he learns how to move the pieces to the goal at the end.

Yes, as Arimabuff says, a good way to gradually reduce that handicap is to only let him switch on the even moves, then only on multiples of three, etc.
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by omar on Jan 15th, 2010, 12:01pm
I was going to say that for a 3 year old you might want to start with tic tac toe or dots and boxes just to introduce the concept of taking turns and working towards a goal. But it seems that your daughter has already advanced passed that level.

She might be ready for Arimaa, except that the freezing rule, rabbits not moving backwards and traps being secured with friendly pieces might take a little while to adjust to. She will understand those rules without any problem, but will likely forget to follow them during a game. It even happens to adults (a bit like blundering a piece).

To make the game more balanced you might want to try the dice variation which I often use at home with my daughters. You basically roll a dice to determine how many steps you get to take. If it rolls to more than 4 you are still capped at taking 4 steps. My youngest daughter likes to play the variation where only I have to roll the dice and she always gets to take 4 steps :-)
Title: Re: Teaching Children?
Post by aaaa on Jan 16th, 2010, 7:52am
What about Capture Go?


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