Minecraft Preschool Party

Hello again, everybody!  This is Brittany from Precious Steps Preschool with a fun party idea that you can incorporate into a classroom lesson for 

ages Pre-K and up!

For my July post, I had Minecraft on my mind!  My little brother has a birthday in July, and he's been obsessed with Minecraft since he was just about in Pre-K.  Party planning is somewhat my forte, so I had the honor of throwing him a Minecraft Birthday Party.  That got me thinking, how could I turn this into a lesson plan for children his age and older?  So here it is!

One of the most obvious ways to incorporate Minecraft into a lesson plan, is with the 3D shapes used to build the different settings.  You can use the terminology for these 3D shapes, cube and cuboid, as you discuss this lesson to introduce some new vocabulary words.

Using regular building blocks or Legos will be fine, but you can also pick up these fun papercraft building kits for not very much money.  (This one was $10.99 on Amazon).

But to make this lesson really hands on and exciting for your Pre-K kids, you can let them practice their cut and paste skills by giving them these templates: (many more available online)

While your children are building, you can discuss with them their first word problems with examples such as:  "Your land is two cubes high.  How many would it be if I added three more cubes?"

You can increase the difficulty of the problems based on the child's age.

Give them this worksheet to have them record their answers.  You could also ask them to draw cubes and make some problems of their own.

You can also use Minecraft to exercise some Creative Writing.  Give your students a blank sheet of paper and ask them to use their imagination about what they would include in their Minecraft World.  Write a few sentences for them including their answers and ask them to draw a picture to illustrate their description.

Here are some pictures from the birthday party to give you an example of ideas you can use for decorations and snacks.

Now the most delicious part of this lesson plan/birthday party -- the cake!  I have to admit that I began feeling like I was in over my head when I started making this cake.  But it came together nicely and really can be broken down into smaller steps and then put together for the grand finale!

If you have access to a kitchen, your Pre-K kids will love helping you make the rice krispie treats and brownies that make up this cake.  The sand cubes are your typical rice krispie treats.  The dirt cubes are made with cocoa krispies.  The grass cubes are make with rice krispie treats that are dyed green by adding a few drops of green food coloring to the melted marshmallow mixture before adding the cereal.  The back row is simply built with brownies and topped off with some piped green icing "grass".  And finally, the water cubes are made with Jello Jigglers.

You'll notice that the decorations a top the cake are Minecraft characters (and the popular Minecraft Melon) made with Perler beads.  This is not my first post to reference Perler Beads and it also will not be my last!  These things are amazing and take me right back to my own childhood.  There are plenty of templates online that you can print out and give to your students to have them try to replicate the characters.  Or, you can give them a square perler bead peg board and have them create their own character that they would want to live in their very own Minecraft world!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope I gave you some inspiration to throw your very own Minecraft Party for Preschoolers or ANY age!