First, What is Minecraft Homeschool?
To understand the situation one has to first know what minecraft homeschool is. First, Minecraft is video game. It is creative genius with basic graphics and many ways to play. It is a popular game that many kids love and even many geek adults. It can be played alone or with others online. My husband and I have spent many hours playing with our children this past year. Our youngest was 5 when she started to play last year and has mastered so much of the game.
What does the game have to do with homeschooling though? We already homeschool, for many reasons, one being that we are geek parents and love learning with our children. When we learned about the minecraft homeschool, and idea we had ourselves for a long time, we signed our kids up. Basically, the company put together a curriculum of sorts using free resources they found online. The first week was about the Eskimos of 1960’s. They used youtube videos to teach the kids about that time period and people and then another video on how to make minecraft igloos. Then there are assignments for the week that the kids get online, in special minecraft worlds and have to complete. There is team work involved in some parts as well.
So how did he get kicked out?
For the first few days I was right there with my children as they did their work in the minecraft homeschool. We went on vacation though for the holiday. One morning I learned that my 8 year old son had been blocked from the server, he couldn’t get to his class on it. Hours later I got an e-mail saying reports had come in that my son had been breaking other peoples projects and so they had to stop him. WHAT? My son!? My sweet, always follows the rules, compassionate son? No way! The hours they gave for the action seemed a bit odd to me. I read the reports and just couldn’t believe it. How could though all those other kids see him doing it, his user name, and he be innocent.
I didn’t believe it, and I told the school so. My husband didn’t believe it either. My husband reminded me that our son had put in a report about another kid hurting his project and maybe that kid got other kids to file false reports. Yes, that is where our minds jumped to, conspiracy, because our son just could not have done it.
We put a program on his computer to record everything he does on it, our idea as we thought if something happened again we could use it to prove he was innocent. He loved the idea! So the school let him back in. A day later he was banned for good. Kicked out. WHAT? Why?
It wasn’t him!
As it turns out, that morning, Memere, the children’s Grandmother, found our 6 year old daughter on her brothers computer playing in the Minecraft Homeschool. She thought someone hurt her project again (Not reading well she didn’t understand the signs saying it was someone elses house!) She went berserk and started destroying everyone elses stuff. She has a temper, there is a reason I call her my Stormbaby here. She is a force of nature! An adorable one of course! She then confessed and told us she had not been able to sign into her own account so she got on her brothers laptop and had been using his. For a few days she had watched us ask our son if he did it, and each time he said no, and she didn’t speak up! She let him take the heat and watched his sorrow over getting kicked out.
What did he do?
I thought our son would be angry with his sister, but he was quickly over it and went right into big brother mode. He was trying to explain all the school rules again to his little sister. She really doesn’t seem to understand why she can’t do what she did. There is a disconnect. She understands that if someone hurt her project she gets upset, but she doesn’t understand it seems why if she hurts others projects why they would be upset. It is something we will have to keep working on. Another sign to me that we should have gotten her tested for possible spectrum. She had grown and changed and adapted so well with help but still….
It’s ok!
So I let the school know what happened and they came up with a great solution. Our son could stay at the school, not our daughter. They thought my son might be bullied though because as far as all the other kids go, his user name was the one hurting their projects. So they put him in another class, with other students who don’t know his user name. A fresh start. Now we have to do all we can to make sure his little sister doesn’t get on his account again when he is sleeping! Stormbaby knows she isn’t allowed to do that now, and that might well mean she tries all the harder! She is a clever little girl and so creative but she just isn’t ready for the social game in Minecraft Homeschool!
What a novel idea. How is your son enjoying the experience and how do you rate the classes as a parent? My kids love Minecraft and I’m not overly thrilled with the education system we currently have in place.
We really like the idea of it but I am not yet ready to give a full opinion on it. It uses open source tools to teach social studies with the minecraft world. It isn’t a full curriculum, more like an elective for homeschoolers. The price is great though and I see a lot of potential. I will post a full review after the the full class in January!
Do you have an updated review for Minecraft homeschool?
Not a full update yet, I want to do one more class before reporting back on it! Thank you for asking though!
Hi! My son has also been doing Minecraft Homeschool classes for several terms now. I’m happy to see here how Minecraft Homeschool understood your son’s predicament and gave him a chance to continue being part of MCHS 🙂 It has been a good experience for us, a good addition to my son’s homeschooling.
I absolutely loved this story! Too funny. I had to share this on all my social media accounts. I’ll probably link back to it on my weekly wrap up. So funny…lil Stormbaby!
Mine girl got banned today for having a skirt that was too short. Who would have known? Seriously? Like it’s showing anything. So I gave her a burka skin.
So far she likes doing it though, More girls in there than boys.
I was wondering what is the website for the minecraft school. I am interested in trying it but I have found many different sites not sure if it matters which one I sign up for or not.
They have had a name change but you can find them here: http://www.GamEDAcademy.com
I’m so happy to hear that they worked with you on the issue. 🙂 We are really enjoying the courses. Although we’ve never had an issue (and one like yours is very possible) it’s nice to know that they ‘get it’.
Interesting story, but down to the root of the problem: why was a 6 year old online so many times without supervision?
I can understand the concern. My husband works in cyber security and national security and we feel secure in our children’s online access. Of course we didn’t see this coming. The older kids with more open access to the internet now have passwords on their machines. The younger children have a lot more limits on what they can actually do though we give them access to their machines when ever they like as learning doesn’t happen in a 9-5 time frame.
Hello,
Thanks so much for that post- riveting, lol. I actually found it while searching for a homeschool minecraft server. We are less than a year into homeschool with my 9yo boy and he’s lonely sometimes during the day… although it’s only recess that he misses. We’ve been doing park dates and joining 4h but having a minecraft community is cool- and if he can learn more and have assignments even better. I’m not super tech savvy- I’m not understanding how the actual courses work (and of course I don’t expect you to explain it!) But is it easy to figure out once you get going?
They changed the courses this year and we haven’t sign up for the new school year (we are in the middle of moving!) I have heard they are at the child’s own pace and so I wonder now just how social it actually is. I liked that before the kids in a class all had the same assignment and so you could often find kids working together on their projects to get them done in time for the week. I wonder if they still do!