Photos From a Great Season of Summer Camps
Our last week at Alpha STEM in Chantilly brought the curtain down on a fun summer of chess camps, during which we had around 150 kids enrolled with us. We spent time teaching students in Springfield, Chevy Chase, McLean (two weeks) and Vienna (two weeks) prior to the aforementioned camp in Chantilly.
Some of our summer students we knew already from our after-school chess programs, while there were others we were happy to meet for the first time. As usual during our camps, we had all ability levels represented; some of the kids were beginners who learned the rules and strategy of chess over the course of camp. Other students used the time to build on the basic knowledge of the game that they already had. All of our lessons were structured and stratified so that everybody was challenged to learn something new.
In between the lessons, the kids relieved some tension in the school gymnasium and made new friendships over skittles games. Each Friday of camp finished up with a tournament, during which the students got to put what they’d learned during the week on full display.
Chess helped us all make a lot of great memories this summer, and with the new school year nearly upon us, we are already looking eagerly ahead to the start of our after school clubs in just a few short weeks.
