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As with a house, in chess the foundation decides how securely everything else will stand. It is not a matter of putting as many exercises as possible in front of children.

What matters is which exercise they solve, in which order it appears, and how what has been learned is then consolidated and transferred to new situations.

Every exercise in the CHESS MONKEYS series serves a clear learning purpose. It introduces a motif, consolidates an idea already known, or asks for that idea to be applied in a new setting. New demands are introduced in steps that can be followed.

Familiar motifs return in changed form. In this way what has been learned is consolidated and increasingly transferred to unknown positions. The number of exercises on a topic follows its importance and how often it occurs in practical play.