Minecraft project by Justin, age 8
This was Justin’s first year homeschooling. He is 8 and has a passion for creating things — anything! Justin LOVES legos, but our puppy has made that a challenge over the last year so he has spent more time building on Minecraft.
In October, he created his own idea for a Steve costume and carried a box that looked like a Minecraft chest that he made for Halloween. His excitement, planning and creativity around this costume, led to an idea…
I decided to incorporate his love of Minecraft into school to see where he would take it. Justin first made a vocabulary list of words for Minecraft including biome, lava, mountains, skeleton, lapis lazuli, diamonds and learned about each word.
When he learned about biomes he did an experiment called “biome in a baggie”. He grew wheat grass in yogurt cup in a sealed bag on the windowsill. When the grass grew he then “dressed” the yogurt cups as Minecraft Steve and a Minecraft tree.
One of the Social Studies units this year was about the Alaskan Inuits. Justin created a Minecraft igloo using specifications he read about, and then a sugar cube igloo to match it. He studied tundras and polar regions and climates. He did build his original Minecraft igloo on snow, but for this photo he used darker blocks as the backdrop so the igloo would be able to be seen better in his screen capture.
Justin then decided he wanted to learn a little about how Minecraft was programmed, so I set him up on Khan Academy and he started to learn some basic code. His first project was a Minecraft Creeper.
This then led to wanting to create his very own website to help other kids use Minecraft to create fun and unique things. He did an outline of what he wanted to include and we set him up to create his own site http://coolminecraftdude.weebly.com/. He then learned how to do screen capture videos of his Minecraft worlds and edit and them (he only has one on the site as he also learned that our computer was very slow!). His goal is to continue to add to the website as he learns new Minecraft information that he would like to share with other kids.
The website has really helped his typing and editing skills in a way that was much more fun for him than some of the typing programs he had been exposed to before. It was wonderful to watch him incorporate his love of Minecraft into different parts of his curriculum and dig a little deeper each time (no pun intended!).