Home-schooler Touts Think Like A King

By Cindy Johns

www.kaleidoscapes.com – September 1999

"The first program that we encountered on our road to chess mastery, called TLAK School Chess Software System, was created by Food for Thought Software, Inc. … It uses a very nice system of explaining chess openings, tactics, endgame planning, checkmate strategy, etc. in an easy-to-understand, kid-friendly reading style. It encourages the student to interact and do the puzzles every step of the way. As a home educating family with strong interests in chess, we found the curriculum to be quite engaging for our kids and certainly not boring, texbookish or condescending in any way. Our kids enjoy the puzzles and are currently (at the time of this writing) working through their 3rd book, in a series of 4. We find the scoring system extremely useful to gauge student progress and a marking system that keeps track of the chapters that have been completed, to be quite helpful as well. But in addition to that, their real-life chess playing has improved considerably since we started using Think Like A King® School Chess Software System. As a result of using this software, our kids have gained the confidence to play in tournaments and are active members of a local chess club.!... For a tutorial that holds the kids' interest, and is totally interactive as well as enjoyable to work with, our family has found the Think Like A King® School Chess Software System to best meet our needs [as compared with ChessMaster 6000]"