I registered just to participate in this discussion because my 5 year old is also very interested in Chess so I am also interested in fun websites or chess apps as he always gets more motivated by something new.
We have joined ChessKid and have not seen the problems mentioned by Ultramarina:
We find playing online frustrating. ChessKid, which seems the best fit, is quite buggy and other kids often are poor sports.
DS hardly ever gets to finish out and win a game outright because his opponents almost always abandon their games or resign when he has the advantage. It is also hard to even start a game because people are very picky about matching on rating. The other thing that happens is the server hangs or disconnects.
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In fact we have found ChessKid to be very good and it is free. This is what we get from it:
* We do the 5 chess puzzles everyday. We do that together and compete to find the right answer first.
* We play "slow chess" games together so he can learn from playing with me.
* He plays "fast chess" games by himself and we can analyze and when the game is over, we can go through it again and analyze the moves together.
There are other features we do not use, because they require Java and I do not want to download it to my computer for security reasons.
Perhaps if some other people from this site are registered, we can organize chess games between our kids on Chesskids.com?
We also use:
* Kidchess.com (see Kidchess Evaluator)
* Gameknot.com (see chess tactics and real-time chess)
* PlayMagnus (a free app that lets you "play" against Magnus Carlsen, at different ages. Magnus in the top chess player of the world, and your 6 year old can see what it would have been like to play against Magnus when he was 6, 7, 8, 9 etc.)
* I just bought "Battle vs Chess" for Wii and we are waiting for that to arrive. I can give comments after we play with it awhile.
If anyone else has fun suggestions for Apps or websites appropriate for kids, please let us know.
