Making History Fun with Minecraft

If I had to pick 3 favorite subjects, history would be one of them. In this post I will be going over some ideas of how to encourage even your most hesitant historian to join in the fun. Why? Because they get to play on Minecraft® for school and they get to use their imagination!

The first step? Look over the era you are covering in history. What kinds of things are your kids interested in? Maybe you have a child into cars, trains, airplanes, etc.? Or maybe you have an engineer who just likes to “make things happen!” Look for the things that spark their interest. Make a list of ideas and talk it over with your children and watch their reactions.

Here are a few ideas you can implement in Minecraft just to help you get started.

A Portculis
Pyramid
Castles
Planes
Trucks
Inventions
Rollercoasters
Houses from Different Eras
Important buildings (White House, Capital, Notre Dame Cathedral etc.)
Indian Camps
Log Cabins
A Mineshaft
Lighthouses

You will see them start to get excited about the projects and (if they’re like me) have a hundred ideas about what they want to include. Ask your kids if they have anything they want to add to the list of projects. You might be surprised at their ideas and ambition!

If they need some inspiration, you could look up what others have built (this may be the reason a child is hesitant) and what it looks like in real life. Depending on your children’s personalities, you could have a competition where everyone has to make the same general project. Make up enough prizes that everyone will get one (most creative, most colorful, most historically correct, etc.) and set a deadline.

You could also have each child have a different project and do a show-and-tell. Have them state a few facts about what they have built. (The number of facts should be based on their age.) For the older ones, you could give them a project and have them use it as a writing prompt (history and writing in one project)!

Want more Minecraft ideas for your homeschool? Check out our 31 Day series!