July 2016 Minecraft Update

S's realm has been out of action for about 7 days but yesterday Mojang fixed it and she and her friends are delighted to have it back :) July 16th was it's first birthday.  It is currently  a survival world and this evening O and I came on for a tour of the shops and houses and the church for Bushists (?!) and Taco Cat, We saw the ice cream van and landed up making some banners. S has a new skin. 


S has a group of around 7 friends who she plays with on her realm. She also likes MCPZ, a server, for the creative zone, build battles and murder.

Meanwhile on O's realm he and his pal H have been making Minecart tracks as Rollercoasters. O has 3 friends he plays with on his realm. He is also into Roblox atm and a Teen Titans app on his tablet. O really likes making banners atm especially those with a Mario theme. O spends ages working on his builds

E still has a realm - It has a whole system of command blocks that make kits for battle with enchantments on the weapons and armour- Babysitter M and I helped him put it together  eg How to get more health on realm for kits /effect <User> 21 1000000 10 - it's for PVP


Server wise it is all about Mining Dead and Hypixel Skywars these days with a group of 3 or 4 main online friends - Interesting to read about what he was up to this time last year and how many locations his PC has had since then!


Clash of Clans remains popular with E and his friends and TD and I both play



We have all been playing Pokemon Go - TD is in the lead at level 13 - working in a Town Centre!

Above O (DobotAttack) in my house on S's realm showing me a shield he has just made using banners

S stands at the front of a church she built - it is for bushists and the item frames have pictures of bushes inside

A taco cat above and my sheep shop below - It is called Wooly Jumpers

O outside the ice cream van on S's realm above and below one of the minecart tracks on O's realm that takes you under the water using barriers to stop you getting wet

An aerial view of the builds on O's realm made by his friends and him

One Year Anniversary of Minecraft Mum

So I missed this blog's one year anniversary - here's the first post  compartmentalizing our lives proved far harder than I thought and I still blog daily on my other blog -  yet Minecraft Mum still remains a more accurate description of our days (well mine anyway as I am more IT support than museum expert these days!) than The Gallivanters as our home ed lives have evolved over the years and we are no longer tanned and lean but pale and inside and have burned through around 12 pairs of headphones since my first post on this blog!

Although I guess our return to Insomnia booked for August could be seen as combining the two as it is in Birmingham - Sky Does Minecraft, a YouTuber, will be there and S and E are both really keen on him.

S - Still has a realm with her friends. Her fave server is MCPZ and we recently bought her a rank so when you are the murderer in game you can get to play as her, she's a VIP on Wynncraft but doesn't play on there much. She has also enjoyed the disney theme park server.

S has had her PC in her room for a year now and that's working out well - we all generally come off skype / voice chat around 8pm but she can stay on and use game chat and not all of her friends have skype.


Her fave YouTubers are LD Shadow Lady, Mat Pack and the Orion Sound - Sam Gladiator has fallen from grace since he stopped doing Toyko Soul.

E (9)- is not so into cosmicpvp now - he likes Hypixel still and plays on his realm most days. Sometimes the minigames like Replica. Atm I am helping him with a command blocks project using scoreboard.  Other servers he likes are mining dead. He also likes Technic Launcher but we can still really only play that on our LAN rather than with friends. E has been playing with a friend from Thailand on line for over a year now whilst many of his other friendships have fallen away due to various disagreements he still has enough!

E's PC remains downstairs next to the kitchen and is more likely to be relocated to the log cabin than to his room! He needs lots of loving guidance to make good decisions and help with reading and writing and we've found he's much better in the daytimes.

He also likes Clash of Clans, Clash Royale and CoD on the WiiU - he wishes we had an Xbox so he could play Halo. TD and I (aka Egor on Clash) help E run a clan for his friends - it has been bumpy at points but is in a pretty good place now

His Fave YouTubers are SSundee (he loves the Lucky Block series) and Crainer. and Sky Does Minecraft.

O (7)  is back into his Realm in a big way and has been on there everyday for the last week working on redstone and building or so as he has a new gang of friends He likes Technic Launcher too but also really likes his Mario games on the WiiU - is happy playing alone a lot more - creative building and has recently started to investigate robolox

O fave YouTubers are Sloggerman and Jelly and Dan TDM

We've had Minecraft since 2013 - started our a pocket edition then shared accounts - now everyone's skin and gamer tag are a key part of their identity and the idea of sharing would seem really odd. E changed his gamer tag a few weeks ago from GoldenEt006 to GoldenGremlin21 - I  never thought he would.

Me dead in murder - I play this mostly with S and E - they know it is me even though my name and skin are changed - they say it is because of my drunken swagger!!! A couple of other homeed Mums play too.

 E really likes Skywars on Hypixel - he has a rank of there

Playing as that geekykitty in murder on mcpz

 Some of the builds on O's realm ATM

 Polar Bears where a new addition to 1.10 minecraft

Insomnia 57

Yesterday I took S and E to their first ever Gaming Convention. Insomnia 57 at the NEC in Birmingham.

My hilight of the day was the live role play with Sam Gladiator,  Grian and Taurtis. It was amazing to watch the puppeteer's hands make the slightest of moves on the keyboards beamed up on the giant screen whilst the same people ad libbed the dialogue to a 30 minute show that was a sort of a parody send up of their characters visiting a gaming convention that had been built inside Minecraft.......

I guess that sounds a little confusing if you are not fans of their YouTube channel and don't regularly tune in for Tokyo Soul and Yandere High but basically these three really talented guys, supported by a whole team of other actors (no, they are not MVPs!) perform and act shows that could be TV soap operas or cartoons but use the platform of Minecraft to bridge the fact they all live in very different geographical locations. Changing skins instead of costumes for example and building the sets in Minecraft.

The role play, Sleep Deprivation 58, was excellent with several subversive humour references to the typing errors in the players and channel names on the Insomnia website. 

And, just like the immersive projects, like tractors, Moshi Monsters, Doctor Who and American Girl dolls that have featured on this blog before Minecraft, Minecraft Servers and YouTubers who utilise Minecraft is where we are at now. It was Sam Gladiator who led us to Insomnia and a first gallivanters road trip for E (S and I made two trips to Cardiff connected to Doctor Who last year and one to Nottingham to visit Game Over)

We drove up to Birmingham on Thursday through hideous bank Holiday traffic stopping in halfway at long term friends of mine and TDs (who have also become online Skype Minecraft buddies of S's) for a break and, after near 7 hours of travelling, stayed in a nearby to the NEC Travelodge which was excellent value as it included car parking and we were right by the airport runway so had a great view too.

E was awake at 4am on the day........Hype! Is what we used to called excitement......

We read on the website that the meet and greets had been cancelled due to their popularity (sounds odd I know!) and so I had primed S and E that we might not meet anyone they were hoping too. Undeterred, and with tips from Wizard Keen, S carried her giant You Tube play button around the whole day and didn't ask me to carry it once!

In the queue at the start when I was reflecting on how wise it had been not to bring O - S and E spotted Sam Gladiator - E was excellent and he called out "Sam! Sam!" At this point I was thinking this might literally be the only time we see them so encouraged S and E to ask for autographs and Sam walked off (accidentally) with S's pen!!

Our first request was the Hypixel stand where my twitter friend Noxy said he had some badges for us :) E is an MVP+ on the server and whilst there we started chatting animatedly to MooTV about Super Smash Heroes (a game on the server) which lead to talking about Skywars and glitches and Hackers and one of those great moments when you see E in his element talking to some one who gets his specific specialist knowledge. We were lucky to catch them right at the start. E was thrilled to hear the "unlimited power" voice behind one of his best characters in Super Smash Heroes too

Then we saw Sam, Grian and Taurtis again. Twice! S loves Grian's server Wynncraft and is a VIP on there and on the way home we concluded that not having meet and greets had worked pretty well for the people we had hoped to meet but we mostly chatted about the role play and how amazing it was.

S spotted 5 other YouTubers she likes Okami Artist, (who seemed genuinely touched to have been recognised)  Sir Cutie Yuki, The Orion Sound, Power Dragon and Sea Pee Kay

We watched the live build battle show with DanTDM but thought Grian should have won - He'd even been training Fame over substance :)  E was thrilled to see the competition was introduced by MooTV who we had chatted to on the Hypixel stand earlier.


An excellent day that exceeded expectations and made the 3 hours in the car home fly by :)



In the early days of blogging about home education and child led life learning I often used to say that 5 minute wonders where okay and that you could have a lot of fun in 5 minutes but the Minecraft theme has been running for over 2 years now! It was June last year when I started the Minecraft Mum blog



There was a lot more than Minecraft at Insomnia though - the age ratings for commercial games were advertised - E was keen to look at Halo 5 but it was rated 16 and one age 18 game was behind a black curtain! There was a big League of Legends area too but E doesn't like that anymore.

 There were many people in cosplay at Insomnia - S just wore her sailor collar from Kagmine Rin and Japan Day deciding she wanted pockets and comfort also

 Run way view from hotel window

 Playing build battle on the Hypixel stand

 Spotting Sam Gladiator at the start then getting a decent photo with Grian and Taurtis below

 Signing and Sam remembering he had S's pen!

ScreenDumps of S's Realm

Geeky Kitty's Realm

For the first time in a very long time I have played Minecraft with S (11) yesterday and today on her Realm. She showed me around the monorail and MineDonalds and the tent village and the doritos house we made a Boba Fett onesie using coloured armour. I tamed some ocelots using spawn eggs and fish and also did a little redstone project and used command blocks in a different way from how I have helped Et use them in the past to make a conversation appear in the chat

January Update

What's happening on planet Minecraft?

In the month since my last post E has been gifted a new gaming PC for Christmas. In the few days over the festive season that it was located downstairs next to the kitchen we noticed a massive difference in his play / happiness / behaviour. We moved his new PC upstairs after Christmas but within a few days it was back down again.

The ergonomics of his set up are not great  but having him close by is working out much better with staying connected. Lots of reasons.

E has a core group of 4 friends that he skypes with most days. A, A, P and C and a few others he plays with less often.

The new game on Hypixel Super Smash Heroes has been a major hit with his gang. They love it. As E is an MVP+ on Hypixel he was able to join in the beta test version.

CosmicPVP remains popular and Mineswine too.

E still has a Realm which he plays on most days- HE spent some time building a town with sister S and friend P then reset the world! He also build a castle with another friend then reset the world!

E still has a server hosted by Apex Minecrafting hosting but hasn't used it in a while.



S has been playing hide and seek on her Realm in the evenings but has also been investigating other games


S has really been enjoying the Yandere Simulator

O has played with his friend E from the Doctor Who tour a few times and likes JediCraft. He hasn't much used his realm in the last month

As I type S, E and O are all on Minecraft and Skype.

O is playing with friend L on his Realm. After a break he is back into Minecraft and has reactivated his realm and is building many Mario inspired creations and cat islands

E is really leaping forward. I sat with him this afternoon for an hour and watched him typing and joining in the chat on cosmicpvp. Hooray!!! It's slow and laboured but he's doing it!

Overnight I read the twitter updates of a few of his best YouTubers and server hosts and had a few new facts at breakfast that he didn't already know!

E is also playing on his server, his realm and Mineswine and Hypixel.

E showed Andy Parker (our LEA HE advisory person) how cosmic works this week.

S is playing on a server called Down to Earth which she really likes. She has also enjoyed the Christmas remake on the HE server