Minecraft Camp 2023!

It’s the first day of Minecraft Camp 2023!

I neglected to post—apparently at all—last year about Minecraft Camp 2022.  Last year, I began offering two sessions of camp, both four days long.  That helped divide students into different sections to relieve the numbers somewhat.

I’m doing that again this year, and we’re starting camp with ten (10) students—a great turnout!  We also have three Minecraft Camp veterans as counselors, two of whom attended as campers themselves—Trystan, Hayden, and Miranda.

Here’s to a week of crafting!

—Mr. Cook

Minecraft Camp 2021!

Minecraft Camp 2021 has been a blast!  We’re a bit behind posting to this blog for 2021, but we have sixteen Crafters this year, the most since the first Minecraft Camp in 2014.

We’ll have some screenshots and pictures from camp posted after the last day of camp, which is Thursday, 24 June 2021.  The Crafters have built some amazing stuff this year, and have been having a great deal of fun crashing our server with the Custom NPCs mod.

More updates to come.  Thanks for reading—and Happy Craftin’!

—Mr. Cook

Minecraft Camp 2020 is Coming!

Hey there Crafters!

Minecraft Camp 2020 is coming this 8-11 June 2020, from 9 AM to 12 PM, Monday through Thursday!  We’re excited for another year of camp.

If you’re interested in enrolling, it’s not too late!  Just shoot me an e-mail at tcook@trinitybyrnes.org for more information about registration.

The price of camp is $175 per student, and includes a camp t-shirt.

Happy Craftin’!

—Mr. Cook

Scenes from Minecraft Camp 2019

As promised last night, here are some screenshots from this year’s Minecraft Camp.  Campers made some cool stuff this year, and camp got completely bonkers at the end with Creepers, Creepzilla, TNT explosions, PVP battles, and the rest.

We’re excited for Minecraft Camp 2020, Monday, June 8 through Thursday, June 11, 2020, 9 AM-12 PM each day.  See you next year!

Memories of Minecraftia

Last Day of Camp!

Today was the last day of Minecraft Camp 2019.  I’ll have a more complete wrap-up post later on—the last day is always crazy—but it was a wonderful camp.

We had twelve Crafters—possibly our biggest group, other than our first year.  The kids created some cool stuff (I promise, pictures to come), and Crafter Alexander made a sweet boss battle against Creeperzilla.

Counselors Noah and Trystan (TBCS ’21) helped tremendously.  They’d worked on a sweet PVP arena, but it destroyed when the server program completely crashed around 9:45 AM.  D’oh!  Crafters were put in “Creative” mode to get their lost work back quickly, and all was right with Minecraftia again.

Counselor Bryson wasn’t able to help Monday through Wednesday this year due to work commitments, but he came down from the Upstate to help us out for the last day, and helped engineer a classic, last-day-of-camp final boss battle.

Minecraft Camp 2020 will be Monday, 8 June through Thursday, 11 June 2020, 9 AM to 12 PM each day.  More details to come in April 2020.

A final coda:  we’ve been playing on the same, persistent map for about three (maybe four!) years now.  It’s beginning to bog down under the sheer weight of past years’ creations.  I now get a message that says it will take the server longer to start because the map file size is so large!

So, MCC 2020 might be the beginning of a fresh new Minecraft world.  We’ll see!

Regardless, I’m sure it will be a fun, wild, creative ride.

Happy Craftin’!

–Mr. Cook

Wednesday Challenge

Counselor Trystan (TBCS ’21) has concocted a devilishly difficult challenge for our Crafters—build the structure pictured below in MinecraftEDU with color accuracy:

Students can build the structure as pictured, upside-down, on its side, etc.

The Crafters that get the closest will receive “whatever you want [in the game],” per Counselor Trystan.

Counselor Noah is still working on an epic quest for campers.  Should be good!

Finally, we’ve successfully installed the Extra Creepers Mod I wrote about yesterday.  Woot!

We’re halfway through Minecraft Camp 2019.  The time sure does fly!

Day 2, 2019

Day 2 was a great follow-up from yesterday.  We’re up to a whopping TWELVE Crafters, with Crafter Emma and Crafter Dimitry joining the fun.

Students continued building up their new city, and went exploring for more treasure.  The Lucky Blocks (part of the Lucky Blocks mod) got a little out of hand, causing some server lag.  But everyone made it through.

Crafters shared “fun facts” during our snack/recess time, including a grim factoid about depressurized cabins in World War 2-era aircraft.  Yikes!  Kids say the darnedest things, right?

After much pleading, we’re attempting the Elemental Creepers Mod tomorrow.  A quick test on my server indicates it should work, which will make Crafter Alexander very happy.

Happy Crafting!

–Mr. Cook

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First Day of Minecraft Camp 2019!

The first day of Minecraft Camp 2019 was a roaring success!  We have around eleven Crafters this year, and they’ve already started making some great stuff (pictures below).

Counselor Noah (TBCS ’21) is working on a big quest for the Crafters to attempt.

Counselor Trystan (TBCS ’21) made a purple Thanos head (see below).  Yikes!

Noah and Trystan are themselves Minecraft Camp veterans.

Today, Crafters built homes, grew crops, explored hidden caves, and uncovered lost treasures.  Crafter Chris discovered Fingal’s Staff, an elemental staff with some cool particle effects.

We’re running a few mods that work with our old version of MinecraftEDU (1.7.10), so that adds to the fun.  Crafter Alexander is tinkering with the Custom NPCs mod again, trying to create a spooky Baby Creepzilla boss fight for his fellow campers to fight.

We’re off to a great start!

–Mr. Cook

Minecraft 2019 Information

Minecraft Camp 2019 is just a few days away!  We’re quite excited for another fun week of craftin’.

For parents with students coming to camp, here is some useful information for next week:

Camp is 10-13 June 2019 (Monday-Thursday) from 9 AM to noon.  Students are encouraged to bring a snack and some water.  If it’s not too hot, we’ll have some brief outdoor time each morning to pull eyeballs off of screens for a bit.  We’ll also have some non-Minecraft activities available, like LEGOs and board games.

Camp fees include a t-shirt.  As such, please e-mail me your child’s t-shirt size to tcook@trinitybyrnes.org as soon as possible.  I’ll distribute t-shirts the last day of camp.

Finally, I’ll be posting updates about camp throughout the week on this blog (https://tbcsminecraft.wordpress.com/).  Feel free to follow along!

Thank you again, and we’ll see you at camp!

Sincerely,

Mr. Cook