How to set up an Environmental Engineering challenge in Minecraft

Give your child and environment engineering challenge to fulfill on their favorite video game. This challenge is aligned with NGSS standard K-ESS3-1: Use a model to represent the relationship between needs of different plants and animals and the environment in which they live. This challenge is not affiliated with Minecraft.

 After a generous two week vacation, my children were getting a little bored. Then, after going to back to school for exactly one day, my children were treated to a snow day.



To their credit they did go outside to play in the snow, but it was too cold to stay out all day. Here's what the snow looked like right outside the back door.

Yes, that's the deepest part. 

I had two bored elementary students on my hands. However when I offered them some Minecraft engineering challenges, they got excited! My daughter (age 7), who currently plans to work in wildlife management some day, was especially excited about this environmental challenge.

How to set up your child's environmental engineering challenge

Step 1 of the environmental challenge

First, tell your child to choose a Minecraft animal that she wants to care for. My child chose to work with sheep, because "You can dye them, and it's simple to tame them. Some animals will throw you off."

Step 2 of the environmental challenge

Research her chosen animal. Type or write a list of all of that animal's needs.  Gampedia has long articles on all kinds of Minecraft information. My children have been very motivated to do the nonfiction reading needed to find out how to progress in Minecraft.

My daughter read carefully, and determined that sheep need the following.

wheat
shade
grass
no water

I think "no water" refers to the need to make sure that they don't drown.

Step 3 of the environmental challenge

Design a world for your animal. Your child needs to set up a world that she thinks will be most conducive for taking great care of her animal. My daughter chose to use the plains biome because it would provide plenty of sunlight and grass for her sheep to eat. She did not add lakes or volcanoes out of concern for the sheep's safety.

Step 4 of the environmental challenge

Find or spawn the animal. If your child has chosen the right world, she may be able to just find her desired animal already walking around. If not, she's going to need to spawn some. She probably knows how, but I took some notes for the other moms.

To spawn an animal in Minecraft
Use the "E" to go to your inventory.
Choose Spawn
Choose sheep

Looking at these directions it is easy to see why playing the game of Minecraft naturally builds your child's coding (aka math) skills. The multi-step algorithms are great mental practice.

Step 5 of the environmental challenge

Provide for all the remaining needs of your animal. Instruct your child to revisit her list, and make sure that each of the animal's needs are provided for. Some needs will have been accounted for in the making of the world, but others will need to be added.

My daughter built a structure for shade for her sheep and planted more grass.

The brown spot is because the sheep ate the grass.

By the end of her Minecraft session, my daughter was very excited about her sheep, which lives next her house. She's gone back several times to look after it and care for it.

 I'm excited that my child has begun to develop the skill of thinking about what a creature needs to live well, and how to best provide that. We're both excited about the new way we've found to stave off boredom using a favorite game.