Our in-person reopening plans

After an extremely unusual and surprisingly successful year, we’re looking forward to resuming in-person programs.  Scratch that - we already started them up again on Monday at camp!  Today, we want to share a little information on how to restart (or start) a chess club at your school and our plans for coding and LEGO robotics.

First of all: our in-person camp program in the DC area is back!  We considered earlier times to return, but ultimately it never felt right.  Now with the public health situation much improved (and continuing to get better) we have a lot of interest from both families (most camps are sold out!) and staff to come back.  We’re running ten or fifteen different camps each week in Northern Virginia and Howard County, along with online chess camps every week.

In the fall, we’re planning to offer in-person after-school programs in all 16 of the counties and cities we served prior to the pandemic: Fairfax, Loudoun, Prince William, Arlington, Alexandria, Falls Church, and Fauquier in Virginia; Montgomery, Prince George’s, Frederick, Howard, Carroll, Baltimore City, Baltimore County, and Anne Arundel in Maryland; and Washington, DC.  Please let us know when you’re ready to set up your fall program!

We're planning on resuming chess tournaments in the late fall or early winter.

We’re making one big change: we’re shifting our focus back toward chess, and planning to only offer chess clubs this fall.  STEM programs and staff will move to our sister company Enrichment Matters.  They help schools run high quality, well organized afterschool enrichment programs with less PTA/PTO volunteer time, and you should reach out if you’re interested in learning more.  Adam and I are lifelong chess players, and one of our revelations with running online chess programs was how incredibly fun it was to really have that be our focus at Silver Knights.

Chess will be largely the same as in past years, but we can’t wait to give our students the benefits of all the things we’ve learned in the last year.  Families returning to our in-person programs can look forward to some really cool online add-ons that we’ve figured out from running our online club (which is sticking around forever), ranging from online tournaments to guest instructors to special events with clubs from Australia, Colombia, and New Zealand.

We’re excited to be back in person, so please reach out when you’re interested in getting started planning the fall!