My 8 year old loves Minecraft. Now what?

Question

I paid for, and let my daughter play Minecraft because it was supposed to teach her coding. She plays, but it's not apparent that she's learning anything other than how to play a video game. Can she now use her minecraft skills to move onto something a bit more advanced? I just can't seem to figure out...

Answer 1

Minecraft, in the base sense, encourages creativity by crafting & building houses as well as various projects while avoiding hostile mobs (assuming the game is NOT in creative mode OR on Peaceful difficulty).

In terms of transferable skills / education, you'll have to start get into Redstone eEgineering as it's a rudimentary form of Electro-Mechanical & Computer Engineering. On the base level, it redstone can allow your child to do something with a push of a button, a pull of a switch or a press of a pressure place (like open / close a hidden door / staircase). On the advanced level, you can teach some basic computer components (like logic gates, flip-flops, ect.) in a somewhat practical environment. Since you're doing it in a game environment, it's easier to fix mistakes with minimal costs & being a hands-on deal, it can make it easier to learn for some.

There's noted books that you can pick up to provide some ideas to work on, but some YouTube channels like Mumbo Jumbo can provide some cool & practical ideas to implement into their game worlds. His tiny charcoal generator is something that I've implemented to help automate the process of making charcoal (so I'm not dependent on coal for my furnaces).

One easy redstone construction project you may want to suggest to your kid is to build a cobblestone generator as it can be done as 3-stage project.

1) Craft the generator core -- This can be functional as a manual generator with just a switch, button or a pressure plate.

2) Automate the generator -- This is still fairly simple, but introduces some engineering concepts like pulse clocks & a functional on-off mechanism (typically using a switch) to add onto the generator core.

3) Go 2D! -- This is moderately complex, but still relatively simple to add to the previous generator & still pretty light on processing resources. This adds procedural timing to the process (as you have to complete one step before the next step triggers).


There's some other stuff you can find, but I hope this helps sparks some creativity.

Answer 2

It can lead into construction business or design, interior or even clothing, when you think about it minecraft I'd about designing and. Building ain't it?

Answer 3

Eh, it seems to me like it's mostly about distraction, getting you to put effort into things that aren't real, getting false sense of accomplishment by hunting for virtual things.

Answer 4

fun

Answer 5

I was about to give a good answer on how it uses creativity and imagination, and how it could lead to architecture but everybody have already covered it, so im just in it for teh points

Answer 6

Why would an 8 year old need to know coding? But yes, as others already said there is no coding in Minecraft, well. except for maybe the command blocks. But they are pretty complicated in the first place. But it is an open world sandbox game and it is made for the sake of having fun and not too much for learning. I guess this is just a common case of children (or anyone for that matter) having certain times in their life where they find a game (or whatever) that they like and will stick to it for a while. Just give it some time and she will probably get over it

Answer 7

Now he will become ar real miner and likely die in a pit accident in real life--buy him a canary.

Answer 8

Why would an 8 year old need to know coding? But yes, as others already said there is no coding in Minecraft, well. except for maybe the command blocks. But they are pretty complicated in the first place. But it is an open world sandbox game and it is made for the sake of having fun and not too much for learning. I guess this is just a common case of children (or anyone for that matter) having certain times in their life where they find a game (or whatever) that they like and will stick to it for a while. Just give it some time and she will probably get over it. :)

Answer 9

Nothing. Just let her enjoy herself.

Minecraft is a sandbox "lego" game and you can do whatever you want.

Answer 10

Mindcraft by itself doesn't teach coding. You _can_ code within the game but you don't have to.

Nonetheless, Minecraft by itself isn't bad. It's essentially a large LEGO set on the computer. She can build castles or whatnot to her heart's delight. If she wants to get into more complex projects, THEN she'll need to learn about coding within Minecraft. There are separate books or online resources for teaching that.