Over the last several months I have discovered the joys of
being a Minecraft Mum. That is, a Mum to two small boys who have become rather
addicted to the game Minecraft, and all of its related trappings (and toys!). I
read somewhere that once your kids start playing Minecraft, it is all you hear
about, and I can confirm it is true ;)
This year it even meant that when my lovely sons shopped for
my birthday, they were very proud that they brought me these diamond earrings. As a good Minecraft Mum, I did proudly wear these to
work, where I kind of hoped all the cool kids would be most impressed. They
weren't, but I did meet lots of OTHER Minecraft Mums who were, lol.
What is Minecraft? Well, it looks like a very basic kind of
game, where everything is in cube form, including the main boxy character
Steve. But while it looks really basic (and like WHY WOULD ANYONE EVEN PLAY
THAT), it is in fact a virtual sandbox, where players can build and create
anything they can imagine, using cube shaped building blocks. The possibilities
are pretty much endless, and that is the true beauty of the game. The things my
five year old has created are stunning…..and a little scary ;)
I knew we had reached new levels of addiction when my 5 year
old was completing activities for the Dare to explore summer reading programme
at the library, and in nearly every case, he could find a way to make it
Minecraft related. We needed to come up with ingredients for a magic potion,
and he came up with ghast tears, gunpowder and redstone, which I was a bit of a
mix of disturbed and impressed with, until his Dad pointed out they were things
that you pick up in Minecraft, phew!
It is so nice to know that being a Minecraft Mum is quite a
common phenomenon, there are even websites such as this one to support and inspire us (and maybe give us a clue when the kids know more
than we do).
Not to mention all the fantastic books we can borrow from
the library, some of the personal favourites in our household are:
Craft projects for Minecraft and pixelart fans by Choly Knight
Minecraft : beginner's handbook by Stephanie
Milton
Minecraft for dummies by Jesse Stay
and The Minecraft guide for parents :down-to-earth advice for parents of children playing Minecraft by Cori Dusmann.
You can even borrow the game itself from
the library!
We have it available to borrow for the Xbox 360,
