Seeking craft project for 10 year old boy

November 27, 2012 6:10 PM

Craft project for 10 year old boy who is REALLY into Minecraft?

I have been through Pinterest and Googled a ton of parenting blogs (or fronts for food/toy companies), but haven't found the right holiday craft project for my 10 year old son to bring to school. He lives for Minecraft and also likes Lego and geology. Any ideas? It needs to be relatively small. THANKS!

posted by punkfloyd to grab bag (14 answers total)

Sugar cube house and winter scene?
posted by erst at 6:14 PM on November 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

Minecraft Papercraft has some cool stuff that could be a jumping off point for other projects... maybe he could make some orignal blocks?
posted by jorlyfish at 6:34 PM on November 27, 2012

Did you know there's Minecraft Lego? It isn't really "craft", I know, but so cool.

On preview - oh yes, papercraft!
posted by thylacinthine at 6:39 PM on November 27, 2012

Bead sprites! Google for inspiration. You can buy the buckets of beads and boards at craft stores, Michaels, Walmart or even sometimes IKEA. Then all you need is an iron and parchment paper. Perler is the major brand for beads in North America.
posted by cgg at 6:39 PM on November 27, 2012 [1 favorite]

All terrific ideas so far. We may try all of them!
posted by punkfloyd at 7:07 PM on November 27, 2012

Here's a whole Pinterest board chock full of ideas. Perler beads were my first thought too, they are fun and easy and capture the same pixelated aesthetic as the Minecraft software.
posted by Flannery Culp at 7:12 PM on November 27, 2012

My son and I made a giant 8 bit Megaman mural on his wall out of duct tape. Your son could do a creeper. He liked a post-it note mural that he saw on a website somewhere, but it was easier to find the right colors in duct tape and more permanent. (None of the squares have fallen off and we made it in February.) The only hard part is cutting the duct tape into squares, but it wasn't too hard with a rotary cutter and mat. I'll give you more instructions and pictures if you're interested.
posted by artychoke at 10:14 PM on November 27, 2012

Ooh, artychoke, my kid would also love that mural and has a lot of empty wall real estate...
posted by Flannery Culp at 4:19 AM on November 28, 2012

@artychoke... can you post a link to pix for us all to see? We did make a Creeper Halloween costume out of boxes. We saw it on YouTube.
posted by punkfloyd at 4:28 AM on November 28, 2012

By the way... I have tried, but I don't really understand Minecraft. Is the game appropriate for a 10 year old to play? He seems to be learning about strategy, minerals and math concepts so we let him play. He sets up servers with friends? Obviously we've made sure its not ultraviolent or otherwise inappropriate. And we have told him not to share any personal info with strangers, etc.
posted by punkfloyd at 4:40 AM on November 28, 2012

I'm a Scary Religious Person, and I think Minecraft is age-appropriate for any kid who can understand how to play the game at all.

I don't let my kids play multiplayer, so I don't have to worry about the folks with whom they are interacting. It sounds like you've set appropriate boundaries for multiplayer, though, so you've got that covered.

As far as craft is concerned, my wife knit me a green-and-black hat that has some of the monster faces on it ("creepers"). I think all kids should knit. :)
posted by DWRoelands at 6:06 AM on November 28, 2012

Okay, I put some megaman pictures on flickr. I included a picture of how I cut the squares, because it's hard to describe. I put strips of tape on my self healing cutting mat thing and then put another strip along the edge of my clear quilting ruler. Then I could cut the strips into squares using the tape on the ruler to measure. I would cut lots of tape at once and either bring the whole mat to peel and stick or I would stick all the squares around the edges of a kitchen cutting board so the kids could stick them while I cut more. I had to help some with the sticking, because if they'd start to get crooked, the kids had trouble cheating the next couple of rows over a bit in the other direction to get back on track. I don't know what would happen to the paint if I tried to peel it off now, but when we'd peel the duct tape off of the wall to adjust the squares, it didn't hurt the paint at all. Actually, the painter's tape we used to create a guide pulled off paint, but not the duct tape. When you peel the squares off of the mat, try to start in the middle of the side. I kept smashing up the corners. We just copied a printed out picture from the internet. Here's a creeper mural that looks like it would be very big.
Maybe you could cut it down a bit! Don't show my son. I don't think he has enough wall space.

I also included a picture of a Creeper Murse I made. My son's friend really wanted a man purse for his birthday for some reason. I made it like a tiny quilt top sewn to a store bought purse.
posted by artychoke at 8:14 AM on November 28, 2012 [1 favorite]

Re: appropriateness of Minecraft --

There's nothing premade/programmed in-game that is explicit that I can think of... you can do some "animal husbandry" to breed your livestock, but that basically entails the two "breeding" animals to have hearts over their heads and bump into each other in a disorganized fashion (i.e. it doesn't look like humping, if I remember right they just kind of run into each other in the most efficient way possible and kind of bounce off each other). There's nothing overly violent either. I guess the only stuff that could be troublesome would be if he joined a server where people were using explicit language on signs or say, building giant models of naughty bits or whatever... which frankly seems a little unlikely anyway, from what I see people would rather build the spaceship from Futurama or a big Tardis or whatever rather than giant phalluses.

But if he's playing with friends (presumably other 10ish year olds) then I wouldn't worry about it at all, especially since you've already told him not to share info etc.
posted by jorlyfish at 10:40 AM on November 28, 2012

Thanks jorlyfish.
posted by punkfloyd at 11:36 AM on November 28, 2012