Minecraft builds channel:

Astro’s pitch- I will have a channel where I make builds in Minecraft.

My (teachers) requirements- Builds must be accurate, scaled down versions of historical buildings. This will require taking careful measurements and receiving assistance from me in the planning stage. Correct vocabulary and terms must be used for all building elements.

Cooking Channel:

Flower’s pitch- I’ll make a channel where I bake and cook things.

My requirements- For each dish that you are to cook onscreen you will learn and understand the chemical process that is happening to make the food change. You will provide two different serving sizes, converting ratios by hand.

I presented my requirements for the projects to the group and reminded them that I was there to support them. I also repeated that filming and posting a single show was the final point in their project. Everything else leading up to that would take up most of our time. Now that they had those daunting tasks looming it was time to have some fun. A little exercise outside and then, research!

We spent one weeks worth of project time, about an hour a day, reviewing content that was similar to what we wanted to make. Here’s what we did. Notebooks and pens out, we chose one cooking and one Minecraft video to watch. We tried to find one thing we would have done differently and one thing we liked. The thing we liked was actually anything from our project time. Not just the video. This could be a comment, the way something was framed or presented, this was to introduce the idea of the Here, There, Everywhere closing routine from the folks at gamestorming. To get the kids practicing critically assessing why they like anything so that they can apply those principals or elements elsewhere.

Conducting this research in the group with a 4, 9, and 10 year old was invaluable. The subjects required completely different approaches and the responses and preferences revealed wildly different tastes and this was such good data for these young producers to have. Unfortunately my students did not choose a project that they could work together on. In future, I will absolutely require that. There will be a lot of overlap but I do not think this is the ideal way to approach PBL in the homeschool environment. Mental health first though, they are both so, so excited.

At the end of our week of research my students had a clear idea of the type of product they wished to produce and a beginning idea of how to make a quality product that others would enjoy.