Minecraft Labs for Kids: Cookie Mania

There’s no better way for kids to learn than while having fun! And with a game as versatile and accessible as Minecraft, the possibilities are endless. The Unofficial Minecraft Lab for Kids is full of fun, creative ideas for educational exercises that balance screen time and activities. Here’s a quick, easy, and most importantly, tasty example to get you started

Crafting cookies in and out of the game make this the yummiest lab. To complete the family activity, bake a batch of delicious cookies to explore the science behind cooking.

Cookies were the first food in Minecraft that could be stacked. Stackable food allows you to carry more when exploring the world. But not all cookies in Minecraft are edible, as you’ll see in the Minecraft part of this lab.

Family Activity:

Cooking is a science. When we combine ingredients like flour, sugar, and butter to make cookies, they change chemically and physically, first as each ingredient is added and mixed, which changes their texture. During baking, cookies go through a chemical change as the butter and other ingredients melt, aligning their atoms in new combinations. That physical change leaves the cookies lumpy with yummy bumps.

Approximate Time to Complete: 45 minutes

Materials: Your favorite cookie recipe

1.) Notice the patterns among different cookie recipes. Some require more butter or sugar, while others ask for extras like chocolate chips. The pattern of baking cookies remains the same: prepare dry ingredients, prepare wet ingredients, mix, place dough onto pan, bake, eat, and smile.

2.) When you make your chocolate chip cookies, notice the changes in texture that happen as the ingredients are mixed and then baked.

3.)  Try making peanut butter cookies. Peanut butter cookies generally have patterns on top. Once the peanut butter cookie is on the baking sheet, you can take different utensils like a fork, knife, or spoon to make patterns. Try making a creeper face on your peanut butter cookies.

4.) Be sure to share your delicious cookies!

Minecraft Play:

Crafting cookies in real life is much more delicious than the in-game counterpart, but it can be just as fun. In this part of the lab, create cookies.

Game Mode: Survival

Approximate Time to Complete: 1 Hour in Minecraft

1.) Craft “edible” Minecraft cookies by harvesting wheat and cocoa beans. You can find cocoa beans hanging on trees in Jungle biomes, which are strewn with vines and trees.

2.) Create an oversized chocolate chip cookie. Study one of your freshly baked cookies. Notice the lumpy top, the different colors, and the uneven shape. Gather blocks, mixing oak wood planks (to get the light brown color) mixed with spruce wood or dark oak wood planks (for chocolate chips).

3.) Craft an oversized peanut butter cookie. Use birch wood planks to make the classic peanut butter color. Once you’ve crafted the shape of the cookie, use more of the blocks to create your own pattern on top. Just like a fresh peanut butter cookie takes a fork to create the grid shape, you can craft any pattern using more blocks.

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Take charge of your child’s screen time and learn fun lessons in math, science, art, architecture, and game design!

Balancing your child’s screen time can be difficult, especially when it comes to popular open-ended video games like Minecraft. The game offers players an exploration, imagination, and creation-focused environment, but its nonlinear game structure can mean spending a lot of time in the game.

Minecraft Lab for Kids includes a variety of creative exercises that explore the game’s aspects and use them to teach fun, educational lessons. Begin the book by brushing up on some common Minecraft language and examining each of the four game modes: survival, creative, adventure, and spectator. Then, use this knowledge to venture off onto the six different quests that encourage child and adult participation. These “gamified” labs will allow your child to earn stickers and badges as rewards as they complete quests. You’ll even learn how to screencast and narrate your own videos to share with family and friends! Unofficial Minecraft Lab for Kids provides a fun, educational gaming goals that you and your child can reach together!