A tree can be made of pink glass as easily as leaves!This
This session plan was very simple. A team game and an activity to see if we can use the building paradigm to express feelings.
Tower of Babel Team builder
This was suggested by my son. I found a hill. Then worked out the number of blocks between the top of the mountain and the top of the world.
I divided the height into the number of players and gave each that many blocks and ladders (plus about 25%)
We put them in survival mode. They then had to work together to build a tower as high as they could But they needed to work together to achieve it
Blob tree
Taking an idea from the Blob Tree pictures for youthwork where different blob people are pictured in a tree in various poses. People can point to a blob person to represent how they are feeling.
I used the fractal tree plugin. This was tricky to get right and I made a test world to practice in. Eventually I got the huge tree I wanted. We planted it in Boring world and landscaped it a little. Adding a few lanterns for illumination.
We invited the kids to make something in the tree to explain how they were feeling at the moment.
Blessing
Using the Hologram plugin I suspended the Northumbria Community's Morning prayer blessing to read at the end of the time. The Amen proved a good point to let off fireworks!
Reflections
- This session highlighted the need for speech and hence the Zoom to be added to the experience. One player joined the server but not the zoom. I could not type and tell him what to do and lead at the same time. So now we insist on joining the zoom, but not that the camera should be on! Many folks for bandwidth reasons do not have the camera on. Some people share the zoom with a sibling or parent. But they all can here and will speak.
- The team Babel team builder went really well! They needed extra bread for food but they got to the top in the end. It was hard. They poured water around the tower to cushion falls! Great team photo op at the top!
- The Blob tree seemed less effective. Mostly people were really happy. I was expecting a wider range of emotion but they wanted to express how pleased they wore with Minecraft church! Cake was offered, music played lights and fireworks made. I realised that the abstract nature of what I was asking was hard for folks with spectrum disorders (wnow have two.) The connection of feelings to their building was not obvious to them.
- This was a short session. This was good and it immediately stimulated freedom to build in boring world. Collaborative building started at this point!