The Homeschool Buyers' Co-op has Youth Digital's Minecraft Mod Design course on sale ($150 for one year of access to about 30 hours' instruction, usually $250) until 4/30. This course introduces Java programming.

So far (4 lessons in) we are impressed by the quality of the instruction and the availability of quick individual help. Thumbs up.

There is software to download and you could do some editing of images offline, but the bulk of the work is done online (tutorials you watch, stopping to do steps as you go).

DS is still loving this. The teachers are very responsive.

My daughter did the class and really enjoyed it. She is doing App Design now.

DD did this class and loved it, too.

My DD will be 8 at the end of the month. She LOVEs Minecraft and learns quickly. However, none of us have ANY programming experience at all. Do you think this would be too complicated for me to do with her... I say it that way because she is already better at technology than I am, but would probably still need help;-)?

The YDS courses come with online support, so I wouldn't worry too much about lack of programming skills. The support people have always been very responsive and patient whenever my son has gotten stuck on something. DS has independently completed a number of these courses over the years and enjoyed all of them.

YDS also offers excellent summer camps. I see they're in more cities now than ever.

Thank you both! Just showed the videos to DD and I think we are going to give it a try!

All help can come from the teachers. They do a really nice job of showing exactly what to do in the videos, including finding errors and fixing them-- but they expect that you will email them.

(This course is actually a GREAT exercise in writing clearly, because describing a problem to the teacher is a nice goal-oriented writing exercise!)

DS has had no help from parents on this; doing it himself and getting results. I could not be more pleased.

Awesome information! Thanks for sharing this! She is very, very excited!!!

I'm curious how often your kids had to contact support. I think the course is really well done, but my kid can't seem to get through many lessons without getting stuck on something and asking me or messaging support. He still really likes it and doesn't seem frustrated. His errors aren't typically with programming per say, but with not copying and pasting something correctly, or importing an item to the wrong location, that sort of thing. He's 9.

My kids, 8 and 12, messaged support independently so I'm not sure how often it was needed. At a guess, maybe once per lesson (that is, 10 times for the course). I took it as a good lesson in self-advocacy. The tutors aren't in on Sundays; since the kids mostly worked on the weekends, that provided enough of an incentive to figure stuff out on their own that I wasn't worried they were using the instructors as a crutch.

DD is 9, I'll ask her. She hasn't asked me for help...which is good because I'd have no idea what she's talking about.

DD9 says that she messages the instructors just to say "hi". Good grief--I told her to stop doing that. I'm not sure how often she is sending them messages for actual help but probably at least once per day (when she's actually doing it).

DD8 has had to contact them once or twice each lesson. She is not too frustrated so far. She thinks it is cool to be able to contact them herself... so, I guess it is giving her another new skill:-)!

That's great My son contacts them too. I had to teach him how to attach the file with his code so that they can look at it and find the error. He got a new game called space engineers that he loves so is taking a bit of a break from the class. It's nice that they have a year to complete it.

That's hilarious and cute. It must be interesting to work there, I bet they get a lot of funny messages. The titles of the messages my son sent are goofy "WHYYYYY JAVA?!!!!" and "JAVA strikes again...".