Master Multiplication With Minecraft
In school, I was always horrible at math. I never encountered anything to make it fun or interesting to me. I wasn't even given complete justification of its importance, and so, my care for learning it barely even existed. But as I got older, I slowly began to realize more and more what I was missing. So one of the things I want to make sure of, is that Ms Monkey doesn't have the experience with math (or lack thereof) that I had growing up. I want her to learn what is actually relevant and important about it, but grow into it, through avenues that she can personally connect with and find exciting! So what is she currently crazy about that I can connect it to? MINECRAFT!
Together, Minecraft and math is about as inherent as salt and crackers. And I knew I was doing right by introducing her to the world of blocks when I did... the reasons why slowly reveal themselves as time goes by, with one example being 3rd grade's introduction to multiplication. In the world of Minecraft, the player mines blocks of wood and ore, and then uses them as blocks, placed in rows, stacks, and layers to build structures and mechanisms. In my view, the better one is with their math, the more creative one can get with the things they build. The more one builds more challenging structures, the more they may find themselves needing or wanting to use the math needed to make it correctly sound for them.
As much as Ms Monkey loves Minecraft, she plays it, and watches YouTube videos of it just about every day. In the case of multiplication, introducing it to her through the game will give her another real-world, worthwhile reason for learning and practicing it that she can look forward to, all on her own, or on a multiplayer server where I can join her and create puzzles and arrays for her to figure out, or setting up building projects for her to take on using what she is currently learning. Additionally, there are actually adventure maps created by other players online, designed for teaching multiplication, that she can download and go through to make it even more fun for practicing.
I recently found a video by a teacher who was introduced to using Minecraft for teaching multiplication. In the video, he goes over some basic examples of setting up arrays to solve with different blocks.
Of course, Ms Monkey will not have Minecraft to play in class. She will be given assignments of practicing multiplication in its more abstract forms (aside from any of other activities they're likely to do to learn it and have fun of course). So another thing to keep in mind, is that while methods like these are excellent as fun learning avenues, the metaphors are something not to be hung onto at the end of the day. It should be an interface where the concepts can be transferred not only to, but from, this form, into other forms, including the memorization of its abstract form of numbers as well.
In any case, Minecraft is simple, fun, and very engaging for learning any kind of math concepts such as multiplication. Through the year, I plan on utilizing it to help Ms Monkey not only more clearly learn the concepts of it, but also to practice and memorize her tables, and finally, to assist in transferring it over to other non-virtual mediums as well. For anybody else out there who has a kid that is in love with Minecraft as Ms Monkey is, I couldn't recommend this enough!
So I'm curious. Do you use Minecraft (or other similar games) like this with your kids? Feel free to share your stories and ideas about it! :)
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