Today’s post is a SubscribeStar Saturday exclusive.  To read the full post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.  For a full rundown of everything your subscription gets, click here.

Ah, ’tis the season for postmortems.  I’ve gotten another Minecraft Camp in the books, and it was another good year.

For my British readers who might find the conflation of “Minecraft” and “Camp” confusing, allow me to clarify:  in America, “camp” can be a.) a woodsy outdoor adventure, consisting of “roughing it” in a cabin or tent and staying overnight in such accommodations or b.) any sort of hobby or activity in which children (or, in some cases, adults) spend part of a day (or a full day, or overnight) pursuing for fun or learning.

Minecraft Camp is the latter—it is a “day” camp, meaning children just attend for a few hours (9 AM to 12 PM) and then go home.  When the camp first began way back in 2014, we actually went from 9 AM to 3 PM for five days, but I found that was too much for students (and me).  When the school instituted summertime hours that closed campus on Fridays, I shifted to a Monday-through-Thursday morning camp.

Even with that reduced camp time, I find that students still start to get a little weary of playing Minecraft by the end of the third day, especially the younger ones.  It’s a bit like a little kid thinking that eating forty-seven scoops of ice cream would be amazing, but by the fourth scoop, he’s ready to stop; by the eighth, he’s ready to vomit.

So I always provide some alternative activities.  The big favorite is LEGOs.  I bring a huge box of them, and kids are free to tinker and build with them to their hearts’ content; some of the kids built some cool stuff this year.  My counselors also started playing Hangman with some of the kids, which was a big hit.  Additionally, we take a couple of “screen-free” breaks in the sunshine, and the kids will shoot hoops or kick a soccer ball around.  On the last day of camp, I brought King’s Hawaiian Rolls—a time-honored Minecraft Camp tradition—which the kids devoured with the pitiless fervor of the sea lion.

To read the rest of this post, subscribe to my SubscribeStar page for $1 a month or more.