Minecraft with Homeschool

One of the nice things with homeschooling is the chance to be creative in how subjects get accomplished. This can also be the most stressful thing to a homeschool parent. Although homeschooling is very popular now, there are still many people who are either completely opposed to it   or just don't know a lot about it.

We have homeschooled our son from the beginning and is now in 11th grade. We have tried many different approaches to learning throughout the years. Most recently, was adding in Minecraft. I have to admit, I was one of those parents who thought minecraft was just another addicting video game and put limits on it. After hearing about so many people incorporating it into school, I decided to check it out in more detail.

What I found, is there are many ways you can use it to learn about a wide variety of subjects. It allows the child creativity in learning and a way to put a personal touch on thinking.  Right now he is trying it out for a couple subjects. He has been studying Business Math, so I am having him create a city with buildings, roads, all types of stores that would be in a typical city, and set up a money system and learn/show how that will work.  He is also using Minecraft as part of Language Arts. For a child who hates to write (like mine) this is great. We are just starting so it's not very informative yet, but I can see ahead to great things. I had him choose a favorite book and recreate it. He chose to recreate the land of Eragon. He's reading the book again to find details to make things as close to the book as possible. He decided to focus on the major areas first which are most needed in the story. After he designs an area, he is taking a picture and writing about it on a blog he created. I'm hoping he will be comfortable writing about something like this and become more confident in his writing. To me, that makes it worth doing whatever it takes.

If you want to check out what he's doing, you can find his blog at My Adventures in Minecraft. I'm sure he'd love to see what you think!

Our Daily Homeschool life!

I love reading about other homeschool families. It's interesting how vastly different each home can be. That's the great thing about homeschooling, each family can work in a way that will cater to their individual children instead of trying to fit their child into the mold of everyone else. I am not anti-public school, we just feel like homeschool is what's best for our child.

My son is in the 11th grade for the most part, that means that in some subjects he might work slower on it or in some cases has been on a different level for a class. Being an only child, he really needs the outside community for social activities. We have always been a part of a homeschool co-op. We've done the huge ones and now we are in a small group with maybe 60 kids. I love the group we are in. We meet once a week and have not only academic classes, but also focus on the social part and allowing the kids to be creative and form lasting friendships.

This year my son is taking classes in a variety of ways. He is taking Chinese through a virtual school here in Florida. I'm thankful because there's no way I could help him with this! (and he'll tell you this too!)  He has Computer Technology which we are using great online videos and activities. Then we have the regular book work classes also.

We are pretty relaxed in our day. I see this as both good and bad. We sometimes get busy with life and forget to do something or put it off and all of a sudden it's bedtime:)  For the most part though it works great for us. I babysit full time so I get up earlier, but my son (being a normal teen) usually gets up by 11am, gets something to eat and starts on his work for the day. Some classes are daily, some are a few times a week.  He works pretty much independently except for certain parts of classes.  He works on getting stuff done throughout the afternoon. He knows there are no video games and limited phone usage until he's done. We started doing this to give him the responsibility of how long school takes him. Some days he's done in less than 2 hrs, some days it will take all afternoon into the evening.

For me, I can't imagine sending him off for 8+ hours a day. I love having him home and seeing first hand what he is learning, what interests him and having the extra time when schools done to hang out, relax, see him dive into a good book, spend time with friends or head to the theme parks.

On a day he got done early, we had a lot of time and we were able to play a great game of Settlers of Catan. He loves strategy games and this one definitely adds thinking into it.

I'd love to hear about your day in the comments!