Minecraft Learning Activities

If your kids have been into Minecraft for a while or are just getting into it because of the movie, now is a great time to add some Minecraft learning activities to your rotation.

There has been a lot written about using Minecraft in homeschool environments in particular and the things that kids can learn playing Minecraft such as using creative thinking, learning about rocks and minerals represented in the game, resource management and using modeling within the game to learn or show what they have learned.

You can also challenge kids to construct things within Minecraft with these challenge cards from The Canadian Homeschooler. Working on specific tasks emphasizes logic, reasoning, problem solving, creativity and coding skills.

And don’t miss the resources and challenges from Minecraft Education itself, which has ideas for learning about computer science, cyber safety, math and climate science among other things.

Of course you can also use Minecraft as a way to enhance learning outside of the game, and Homeschool Superfreak has a good list of ways to build on experiences in Minecraft for real life learning such as problem solving, teamwork, geography and architecture. Techie Homeschool Mom has tips for designing your own unit study around Minecraft.

Momgineer has a post on learning about world landmarks with Minecraft, and Teaching Math Literacy has a post for using the game to teach area and perimeter.

Years ago I shared this Minecraft multiplication game, as well as a set of lesson plans and activities with a Minecraft theme.

Pixel Paper Craft has a full printable Minecraft Monopoly game, where the spaces are resources and there are even change ideas to use. So fun!

1 plus 1 plus 1 equals 1 has a good set of Minecraft worksheets for kindergarten, which includes math activities, reading, colors and more. You’ll find graphing and coin counting, phonics and rhyming words and color practice using Minecraft objects, to name a few.

Older kids might enjoy the Minecraft writing prompts from Write Shop.

Make a Minecraft themed Lego number line with this tutorial from Stir the Wonder. Add a die and make it a race to the finish as well as counting practice.

Rock Your Homeschool has printable Minecraft activity sheets that include a word search and scramble, maze, instructions for drawing a creeper, characters to color and more. There’s also one where you can draw your own Minecraft skin.

Rainbow Printables has tutorials for drawing Minecraft characters, and Rock Your Homeschool also has 10 color by letter pixel designs of Minecraft characters and creatures.

When my daughter was younger I would spend a lot of time trying to come up with activities she could do in the car on long road trips and things to entertain her when we were waiting at restaurants and things that didn’t involve screens.

But it turns out there are a lot of great activities you can do with just a piece of paper and a pen.

What Do We Do All Day has a great collection of pen and paper games, including some that can be done with just one person, though they’re all more fun if you have at least two.

There are some classics on here like hangman and dots and boxes, but there are also quite a few I hadn’t heard of before.

I don’t want to spoil the whole list for you because you should definitely click over there and look around, but I will share about the one that you see pictured above.

This game is called Bridges, and you start by making the big random shape and the dividing it into a bunch of sections (the post says 30-50 sections is ideal but I think this one is smaller than that).

Each player gets their own color marker and you take turns drawing bridges from one space to another, crossing a third. Once there’s a bridge, no other bridges can start, end or cross in those spaces. Keep going until no more bridges can be built, and the person who makes the last bridge wins.

Check out the post over at What We Do All Day for more great ideas for no or almost-no prep games you can play with your kids or that kids can play together. I’d love to know if you have a favorite paper and pen game, whether it’s on this list or a different one.

[Photo: What We Do All Day]

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