Dice, Decks and Boards: A Review of Once a Pawn a Time

I received a COMPLIMENTARY copy of this product from the Timberdoodle in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review or be compensated in any other way. This post contains affiliate links. Please see my Terms of Use and Disclosure Policy page for more information. Thank you.

Would your children like to learn chess? What if they could learn chess in a fun way that was offline? Once a Pawn a Time is part of the 2024 3rd Grade Curriculum Kit from Timberdoodle and allows you to teach even the youngest children to play chess with its fun and whimsical approach. 

What Do You Get? 

Once a Pawn a Time includes two fully-colored, illustrated books written by chess teacher, Patzi Stewart. Book I presents chess in a fun and fanciful way. If you are working through the book as intended, it will take you one to two hours to complete it. Book II is designed to be read in 20-minute increments to learn about the chess pieces before playing an actual game. 

The illustrations in the book match the chess pieces. The thirty pieces have amusing faces on them to match the story in the book. Each chess piece has a round circle of felt on the bottom of it. They are also pretty hefty feeling so they won't just fall over.

The board folds up by bending each quadrant into itself. This makes it compact for putting away. The chessboard is also erasable so you can use whiteboard pens on it. And the board is gridded to help you move the pieces according to the books and rules.  

Everything comes in a great box for storage. The pieces have their own bags, and the two books and the board fit perfectly with them into a box that can stand on your bookshelf. 

What Do We Think? 

I think Once a Pawn a Time is best introduced before your children know any chess. If your children have a basic knowledge of the game, like ours do, they will want to skip ahead and get playing. Since I hadn't played chess in quite a while, it wasn't too difficult to convince them to sit with me as I read through Book I.

I really loved the illustrations in the book. The text was easy to read aloud. The directions as to how to set up the board and how the chess pieces move were easy to understand. My only complaint with the books was that the text was small (there is a lot of information to share) and difficult to read on the darker pages (which are color-coded for the chess pieces). A favorite part of Book II for me was the section on opening moves. I must admit to usually starting each of my chess games the same way. 

Our children were excited to start playing. Having Once a Pawn a Time on our game shelf means I can incorporate something new into our homeschool day to strengthen critical thinking skills and emotional intelligence. And with the design of the box, we can easily take it with us to the park, library, etc. 

Would You Like To Play More Games? 

Games are a great way to boost critical thinking skills. Here a few more that I reviewed courtesy of Timberdoodle: 

• Dice, Decks, and Boards: Challenge Your Mind With Horse Academy
• Dice, Decks, and Boards: Navigate the High Seas through Critical Thinking
• Dice, Decks, and Boards: Penguins Huddle Up™ Game