My Daughter’s Minecraft Mindset

My 11-year-old daughter spent a huge chunk of time playing games this holiday season. She had the time, no extra math lessons (don’t ask) no piano or extra curricular’s she normally does which occupies her time outside of school. No homework assignments.  She had to time to take control of her own learning and learn what she wanted, when and how. I watched. A lot. Mainly playing Minecraft whilst surfing other stuff she might’ve been interested at the time like Katy Perry and the like. I pretended not to take too much notice but wanted to let her know I was ‘kinda interested’ in the Minecraft stuff she made. What I saw was pretty cool. Of course Minecraft doesn’t come with instructions or a goal and you don’t ‘win’. She worked on creating her world with horses, multiple storey mansions, trap doors for those pesky zombies, made a boat to go fishing, found villages, explored caves, created a portal to the nether, took care of her garden and whole bunch of other things I do not know how to do (I’m no Minecraft Native that’s for sure). But that wasn’t what amazed me. What amazed me was her ability to weave her way on the net finding out ‘how’. She wanted to build X? She didn’t know how BUT she knew how to find out. Where to look. She checked YouTube, Google, read Minecraft blogs and she even has 2 Minecraft paper books she broke out to look something up. Of course she had a Hangout with her friends and asked them as well. This was pretty awesome because when you think of it this is exactly what we want our kids to do but WE give them lame things to learn because WE feel they are important (and maybe they are but the point is she felt it was important enough to invest her time and energy to find out). I was shocked because she was using and developing her literacy skills. She was reading, writing, viewing, and speaking. I then did my own ‘research’ and read up on How Videogames Like Minecraft Actually Help Kids Learn to Read and this blog on Minecraft and literacy. Loads of info out there and I kind of knew that this was the case anyhow BUT Id actually witnessed this in action which was authentic.

Ive used MC with my kids in school before but I initiated it for the most part and we had a ‘goal’ .. err well MY goal mostly.