Minecraft Christmas Build Challenge 2023

Now that’ve we ran a Christmas Minecraft Build Challenge two years in a row, it might just become an Edinburgh schools tradition.

Our build challenges aim to develop learners’ critical thinking, research, teamwork, problem solving, planning, literacy and numeracy skills. Recent challenges have included building moon bases to support human life beyond Earth, designing sustainable cities and recreating landmarks from around Scotland.

Our Christmas challenge this year was much simpler (it is Christmas!), create a build on the theme of a “winter wonderland” and make it “Christmassy” and do something to make it interesting or funny. As always, the children went far beyond our expectations and many of the entries included giant builds of Christmas trees, snow people and Santa, winter theme parks with stalls and minecart tracks giving a tour of the builds.

Choosing winners from the over 200 entries was very difficult, but the winners of this challenge are (click the images to see the video entry):

Primary Winners

(in no particular order)

Stenhouse Primary School (P7A Team 1 including Ana and Inaaya)

St Peter’s RC Primary School (Max, Donnacha and Battista from P6)

Secondary Winner

Trinity Academy (Team N.A.M. – Nikita, Adam and Mahdi)

We’re very grateful to a local Edinburgh company, Mr Eion Coffee Roaster, for providing prizes to the winners.

Below is a gallery of images from some of the other entries.

Any Edinburgh teachers wanting to learn more about using Minecraft in the classroom should join our CEC Minecraft Education Community Team or contact us here at Edinburgh Learns Digital.