Building the Blockhouse

By Ethan Martin ~Son 

Our first building was the fort/blockhouse/chapel. The fort was not as big as I expected when I saw it for myself, but it did seem like it would get the job done. The fort wasn't just used for defense, it was also used for religious purposes. The fort had about four cannons but as you can see in the pictures, it had many windows to fire the cannons from. The reason they had so many windows is because the cannons had wheels so you could move them around. It took at least four men to move the cannons. The fort had large walls surrounding the village so attackers couldn't harm any of the civilians. The last picture you see is a recreation of an actual picture my father took of my class when we went to Plimoth Plantation on the sixth of November. Sadly, we are missing seven people.

Thoughts on curricular tie-ins from my son's 6th grade teacher

Since I don't have a classroom of my own, although I could make a case that my school is my classroom, I tap into my network of amazing educators in my building, my region and across the world. I asked my youngest son's 6th grade teacher what he thought we might be able to include that would tap into his curriculum. Here is his response:

"...What a great opportunity! John (my son) and I were talking about the connection to electricity and circuits, the use of pistons and simple machinery. I have always been amazed with how my own boys have conceptually grabbed on to the concepts of area and volume without even knowing it. The spatial planning and math involved in the construction is awesome. I also see geology connections and the use of elements to make new substances. Let's talk more over the break."

I often hear folks bemoaning kids' focus on video games and yet I see some of these same folks happily turning their learners over to subscription sites like Study Island, Renaissance Place, and also to a number of free websites which have games that simply replicate electronic worksheets. This is not to say that some of those have a place however I believe that Minecraft offers educators a unique opportunity to put math learning into context. Estimation, area, volume, addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, all of these are put into practice when building in Minecraft.

Now, throw Redstone into the mix and now you can start introducing complex concepts like circuits in a way that gets kids thinking about what they could create using circuits. Talk about moving higher on the Bloom's Revised Taxonomy!

Plimoth Plantation Takes Shape: Terraforming Minecraft

My Minecraft gurus and I started our work on this project by creating a brand new world. We debated picking a specific biome such as a plains or forest biome, but in the end chose to let random chance and happenstance lead the way. We did, however, elect to use Creative Mode with cheats turned on so that we could focus on the build knowing that it would take a number of hours to complete.

My sons started flying over the new Minecraft world looking for an area near an ocean with a forest biome, a spot with hills rather than plains. It took a while but one of them finally found an area with a large bay that looked like a good start. We teleported to him and began surveying the land.

As we compared our research to the landscape before us we realized that the terrain in Minecraft would still need significant terraforming before it could be used to more accurately depict the Plantation site. The pitch of the mountains was far too steep and the valleys too narrow. Since everything in Minecraft is measured in blocks, we planned on a gradual pitch of 1:10, or 1 block up for every 10 blocks in depth to replicate the long slope leading to the fort sitting atop the hill overlooking the village.

The three of us started to work manually until we realized that this would be a long and laborious process. My youngest crafter mentioned that we ought to try using MCedit to do the large scale work and save the manual labor for the fine tuning. Now MCedit is not for the faint of heart, it is a powerful tool for enhancing what you can do with Minecraft worlds, so if you love the world you are working in and wish to ensure that if you make a mistake that you can recreate that world, it is best to make a backup copy of it. That can be done manually or you can have this happen automatically using a tool like MineBack. In a classroom setting, the automatic option may save you a lot of class time and heartbreak!

Other biome resources: How To Geek Guide To Minecraft