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Wantage Tales Art trailer
I am so happy that it is finally here! I hope you will like it.
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Farming, pumpkins and slime
It has been decided – by the majority of today’s votes – that our Ghasty will be called Sunndee from now on. Well done and thank you for all your votes.
We had a great session on farming today finished with two sets of brilliant carved pumpkins and few slices of slime.
We are ready for Halloween!
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The Butler Centre in Minecraft
The great thing about our 15 min ‘working in Minecraft’ sessions is the element of surprise when our members build amazing creations and present them to the group. This is just one of many of those, prepared by Mr_T_ – it’s the very room in which we host our sessions and our team:)
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Notes from our third session
Last Saturday new club members joined our teams. We also have a club mascot now! This little ghast will need a name so hopefully next week we will be able to vote.
Our main topics were mining and types of blocks (Minecraft topic) and crystals (science topic). Club members did amazing job once again so below you can see their creations. They task was to decode their personal challenge and build it in as many blocks as possible.
We have also tried to mine in real life but as all children fairly pointed out – it was hard and noisy work!;)
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Visiting…Lego Exhibition
Lego Exhibition in Swindon is a must for Lego lovers from our area so no wonder that at least two of our club members visited it this weekend. Here are our photos from the event – so good to see Lego Minecraft used for one of the featured constructions.
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Notes from our second session and trip to the Vale & Downland Museum
I have waited to blog about the second session because our second, Blue group needed a bit more time – it started a week later. To catch up we have invited all club members to a field trip to the local museum to investigate range of materials used to build and decorate Wantage. Using our own, Minecraft themed treasure hunt game, we have asked our club members to look for items made of glass, stone, coal, metal and wood but also to search for museum specific items – bones, rats, jewellery, armour and fossils. Everyone was so busy! (We will use this trip next time we meet – in our third session dedicated to mining, crystals and physics.)
The Blue group joined us for their second session and worked on maths and crafting. Our club members spent 15 minutes designing their shed with a roof and a crafting table but each design was unique and very inventive! What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon!
Finally many of us met online again, in our Realm. This time it was a bit busy so we had to work out how to behave, help, build together and finally join one of our members for a virtual dinner – which was a lot of fun! The slide below pretty much sums it all up;)
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Photography Festival in Oxford – lectures and children
It is so sad that people don’t take children to ‘serious’ lectures and our generational gap is ever so wide! Dawid really enjoyed the lecture on the birth of photography in Oxford recently. He was a bit overwhelmed with the type of audience – clearly, just the academic world of Oxford and guests, their friends, even I was feeling a bit ‘different’ to be honest. He did spend some time drawing in my notebook but loved the ideas related to note taking, cataloguing and just listening to two speakers who spent their entire life researching Henry Fox Talbot. I was more interested in the idea of scanning Talbot’s letters and using online collaboration to analyse the results faster, but I have to admit that I also loved the stories about his early photo projects. Very inspiring! So inspiring in fact that when I mentioned to my son that we would go to Oxford again he really wanted it to be another trip to a lecture.
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Do you want to join us?
Boys building in Wantage Minecraft Realm We had more interest in our first week so we have decided to run another group – on Saturday from 3 to 4 PM. Please get in touch as soon as possible emailing sylwiapresley@gmail.com because we still have 6 spaces. If we have a full group by Friday we will start the second group.
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We are now on Facebook and Twitter
…so please follow us their for club updates and learnings but also for Minecraft news, inspirations and cool projects. We have already benefited from our Twitter presents so if you support our idea and want to help, do follow us and help by re-sharing our important announcements.
To follow us on Twitter click here.
To follow us on Facebook go here.
Thank you!
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Notes from our first session
We had a great first session yesterday! I think children were fantastic in introducing themselves and talking about their passion for Minecraft. It was also nice to see parents staying with us and helping!
We have talked about our achievements scheme: children will work towards a title of Minecraft Master so they will need to showcase five major Minecraft skills but also choose their personal achievements. This way they will also focus on their own progress, not just group work.
Everybody was impressed with Finley’s video and the fact he has used Minecraft to complete his school home work:
We have then moved to the actual Minecraft play and work. We have asked all club members to build anything in 15 minutes but they had present it to the group later on. I think everyone did amazing job in focussing on their screen and when asked, presenting brilliant buildings, landscape design, natural scenes, ships and people. All this in 15 minutes!
At the end of the session we have been designing our skins, just like this one:
We have also talked a little bit about safe Internet practice and respectful, kind behaviour when playing Minecraft together with others. We are now practicing it in our Wantage Minecraft Realm and looking forward to our next session!
