Anonymous wrote:Well it has my 6 yr old devouring the Minecraft books tot learn how to build certain things in the game. He carries the book everywhere. He is obsessed though so I restrict it to some weekend use.

Anything that encourages a 6 year old boy to carry a book everywhere and read that much is good. Restricting the actual play time is completely understandable, and it's more likely to make him think through what he wants to do before he sits down to play.

So in short: reading practice and comprehension, critical thinking, spatial reasoning, cooperation and teamwork. But it's a tool, and any tool can be misused.

It's true. but, laugh if you like.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Composing on his cello? Oh, that is so precious. Just, SO precious.

Yeah, I laughed at that too.

+1 Best DCUM laugh of the day.

As long as the homework is done and the weather is bad, I let my 3 kids play as much as they want. When the weather is better, my kids are usually out the door. Minecraft is definitely a creative world for them. My 8-year-old types really fast because of it and I found he learned a bunch of multiplication facts because one of the servers was doing something in groups of set numbers. My kids play it online with their friends (whom I know).

Anonymous wrote:Composing on his cello? Oh, that is so precious. Just, SO precious.

Yeah, I laughed at that too.

Composing on his cello? Oh, that is so precious. Just, SO precious.

Anonymous wrote:I lol at the parents who "restrict" minecraft (or other stuff) bc their kid is "obsessed" with it. How does that work for you? The obsession doesn't get any less, does it?

it's working quite well b/c instead of doing minecraft ALL the time, DS has started composing on his cello and practicing more. DD has been reading more since she can't do minecraft as much. It was a full blown nuclear bomb when they found out about limitations, but after a couple of days, they have found other interests.

I lol at the parents who "restrict" minecraft (or other stuff) bc their kid is "obsessed" with it. How does that work for you? The obsession doesn't get any less, does it?

Well it has my 6 yr old devouring the Minecraft books tot learn how to build certain things in the game. He carries the book everywhere. He is obsessed though so I restrict it to some weekend use.

It totally depends how your own child uses it.
We put a hold on Minecraft when DS was just killing zombies with it. We encourage building in creative mode and prioritizing/organizing in survival mode.

Minecraft is awesome. It's like legos in a computer game. It's the only video game I am happy to see my son play (he's 9). It's open-ended, and therefore allows kids to be very creative. Yes, you do kill animals for food, and it can be part of a problem-solving situation (you have to eat, or you eventually die).

It also helps develop spatial reasoning skills, although to be fair, many video games to that, too. And that correlates with math abilities.

But I love it most for the creativity opportunities. My son has built an entire city with a huge college campus. There's a library, an engineering building, dorms, and a gym. Down the road he built a sky scraper, a Starbucks, an elementary school along with a school bus depot. And there are farms and townhouses, as well as country houses.

And in another world he built an extremely complex roller coaster that goes to the cloud tops and then underground, powered by redstone. You can actually build a working computer "within" the game by using redstone, circuits, and switches.

I play with my son. It encourages teamwork, sharing, problem-solving, and creativity. At some point, if s/he wants, your child can do some basic coding to write a "mod" for the game on the computer. Want to add a green elephant to Minecraft? Add the code.

It IS addictive.

My son did use Minecraft to build a model of the Roman Baths for his Latin class in MS, that was the end of "educational" use of Minecraft. I don't think it is bad though.

Bad no, but I agree with you. I do not see the educational value as many state.

I thought it was suppose to be educational/ building a skill set on a architectural level. Instead I see my child addicted and talking about killing animals, etc.