Minecraft Math: Star Ways Day Pixel Art

Star Wars Day is here again and it’s a terrific time to integrate Star Wars activities into your STEM and other technology lessons. Many teachers think of science experiments when it comes to STEM, however, STEM is not just about science. It includes the integration of math and technology as well.

Today's post is about a pixel art STEM activity that integrates students’ love for Minecraft with their love for Star Wars. It can be a challenging activity and can take anywhere from several hours to several days to complete. There is a potential for students to get frustrated with this activity, so I recommend this activity for students in the middle elementary grades and above.

Minecraft Math: Thanksgiving Pixel Art

I love Minecraft pixel art. Back in September, I wrote a blog post about the advantages of having children create pixel art while playing Minecraft, described how creating pixel art can strengthen their math skills, and shared directions for making three Halloween pumpkin designs. In today's post, I'm sharing the directions you need to make this Thanksgiving turkey pixel art in Minecraft. Keep reading for details!

Planet Power! Types of Renewable Energy

By the time children reach third and fourth grade, they traditionally start learning about different types of energy. Some of the ones they learn about are:

🍎 kinetic energy

🍎 potential energy

🍎 light energy

🍎 sound energy

🍎 heat energy

🍎 thermal energy

🍎 electrical energy

🍎 mechanical energy

However... times are changing and more and more schools and homeschool families are introducing types of renewable energy. What is renewable energy? How many different types of renewable energy are there? How can renewable energy help us? Keep reading to learn the answers to these questions and more!

The inspiration for this blog post came from the children's book Planet Power by Stacy P. Clark. Planet Power is a nonfiction children's book about six types of renewable energy... hydropower, solar power, wind power, tidal power, geothermal power, and wave power.

 

Disclosure: Affiliate links to Amazon are included in this post. 

How to Use Minecraft to Teach Creative Writing to Kids

Several days ago, I wrote a blog post about making Halloween pixel art in Minecraft. A few weeks before that, I described how to practice finding the area of objects in Minecraft. In this blog post, I'm going to write about how you can use Minecraft during your language arts lessons as an inspiration for creative writing. Keep reading to learn more!

Disclosure: Affiliate links to Amazon are included in this post.

Minecraft Math Halloween Pixel Art

Anybody who knows me will be able to tell you about my love for the game Minecraft. In a previous post, I wrote about how you can use Minecraft to teach finding the area of an object in math. With Halloween right around the corner, I’d like to share another fun STEAM activity with you in today's post… how to use math and technology skills to create Halloween pictures in Minecraft. In the Minecraft community, these types of pictures are called pixel art. But in the classroom, teachers often refer to them as graph art.

Disclosure: Affiliate links to Amazon are included in this post.

Minecraft Math Find the Area

With Minecraft being the rage among children... and adults... of all ages, teachers are wondering how they can tap into the excitement and use Minecraft as a teaching tool. Believe it or not, Minecraft can be used to teach math skills such as finding the area, volume, and perimeter of shapes. 

For the purpose of this blog post, I’m not going to teach you how to play Minecraft. There are many resources online and books you can read to learn how to play it. Rather, I’m going to show you how to use Minecraft to introduce finding the area to your young students.

Disclosure: Affiliate links to Amazon are included in this post.