I. G. Suhin - research worker, Institute for the Theory of Education and Pedagogic, Russian Academy of Education; author of a unique technique of teaching the basics of chess to children aged 2 and upwards, an official Russian chess course for primary school as well as over 30 popular books on the following subjects: chess, literary games, entertaining mathematics, etc.

Chess is not only an enjoyable game but also an efficient means of developing children's logical thinking and will power. Teaching chess involves drawing on the intellectual and creative potential of the ancient game. The site gives some insights into special techniques of introducing the basics of chess to children aged 2 to 10, didactic tales and important materials meant for chess as a primary school option. All of these are based on a wide range of the author's innovative approaches, including: an extensive use of chessboard fragments in the process of learning, the practice of applying unconventional didactic tasks and games as well as staging original didactic fairy tales, a detailed study of each chesspiece's capacity, primary use of game positions with a limited number of chessmen, a well-thought-out application of a special lead-in game which ends in one of the players taking all the rival's pieces (in other words, a game without mate: a piece against a piece) with the ultimate introduction of the key chess term - "mate".

How shall we introduce the magic world of Literature to a child? Is there a way of getting it interested in reading and encouraging it to make up fairy tales of its own? The answers to these questions are to be found in the section of literary puzzles, tests, crossword puzzles, adventures and other games. By inventing and using them, the author seeks first and foremost to stimulate children's interest in reading and story-telling, to give an overview of the best books which remain popular with children, to supply materials for joint reading and family competitions and provide teachers with interesting material for school and after-classes activities. (Incidentally, literary puzzles such as "Magic words", "Wonderful metamorphoses", "Magic means", "Hard way", "Friends" have been borrowed by other authors on numerous occasions - unfortunately, sometimes without my name being given). Alongside the chess section described above, it is by far the biggest part of the site.

This part comprises new texts (various kinds of tongue-twisters), speech therapy tasks ("the-other-way-round's", "try-to-find" puzzles, "look-alike's", "one-line" tasks and other helpful inventions), the results of my research into the history of the tongue-twister, some hints on the origin of popular tongue-twisters previously thought to be folk ones.

I used to think that there could hardly be anything new coming up in the field of entertaining mathematics. But, as I have found out, quite a number of interesting ideas are still to be developed. These include: tasks with additional terms and clues, the so-called "number horizontals", magic squares, figures hidden in letters, numbers within sentences, "number tracks", mathematical puzzles without numbers, tasks which involve omitting, correcting, replacing figures within numbers, puzzles with natural, round, prime, complex, odd and even numbers, etc. Some of my inventions and useful tips are presented in this part of the site.

As it seems, the number of existing puzzle types alone rules out any opportunity of making a new contribution. Yet, the way things turn out, there is still enough scope for imagination: hence - my "echo puzzles", "fairy-tale puzzles", tasks with clues, word puzzles, "guess-animal-names" tests, etc.

This section contains my stories and fairy tales.

Home Page URL: http://suhin.narod.ru

Copyright � 2001-2006 by Suhin. All rights reserved.