YouTuber Review: Mumbo Jumbo

Recently we started watching a YouTuber who's new to us. What with the new Nether update there's been a bit of a resurgence in Minecraft, and this guy is a brilliant Minecraft YouTuber.  Particularly if you like crazy (but amazing!) redstone builds.  

I'm talking about... Mumbo Jumbo!

At this point I should explain what redstone is, I suppose, just in case you don't know.  It basically lets you create circuits in Minecraft to perform various tasks, such as move pistons, or power minecart rails.  There are special blocks that help create complex machines, such as comparators, and repeaters.  Seb and I only have only done the simplest things with redstone - I am very proud of my trash incinerator, though I copied it from a tutorial and don't completely understand it - and Mumbo is an inspiration to learn more.

Mumbo is completely clean, no swearing, and entirely appropriate for kids of all ages.  (Including 40 year old big kids like me who still love Minecraft!!)  Plus he has friends who are equally ok, like Grian.

Some facts then.  Mumbo's real name is Oli (Oliver Brotherhood) and he is 24.  He's British (hooray, another British YouTube sensation!) and lives in Hampshire.  As of 20th July 2020 his channel has 6.24m subscribers and 1,810,823,022 views.

His top video is 1 minute 46 seconds long and features him going through 20 doors in 100 seconds.  I can only assume this is a sequel to another popular door-related video, since it is called "20 More Doors in 100 Seconds".  It has way more views than any of his other videos - 64m, with the next most popular having (only!) 18m...

I also like that the top comment on this video is as follows:

One of our favourite videos we've watched so far is where he makes a redstone contraption that uses every single block in Minecraft (every single block that existed circa 28th May 2020, anyway).  He makes a Rube Goldberg machine.  A Rube Goldberg machine is (according to Wikipedia), "a machine designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way".  In the UK we'd probably call it a 'Heath Robinson' contraption.  It has a load of silly moving parts that only exist to make the next part do something, a sort of chain reaction, with most parts not particularly achieving anything of note.  But wow, it's amazing to watch!

The other thing Mumbo does is Hermitcraft.  The Hermitcraft server is a private server for YouTubers/Twitch streamers, with 24 active "Hermits".  It was founded in 2012 and is now on Season 7.  Mumbo is the most popular of these Hermits, by YouTube subs.  Each Hermit uploads content regularly and contributes to the Series as a whole.  You can't apply to join the server, the Hermits look for other YouTubers that impress them and invite them to join.  So Mumbo's been doing it since an invite in Season 2.

He's funny, his redstone is totally mindblowing, and he's family friendly.  If you like Minecraft then definitely check him out.  If you don't like Minecraft you could check him out anyway.  Watch him going through 20 doors, if nothing else.  It's actually pretty relaxing.  :-D

Lockdown Life: What's Your Happy Music?

This week was the last 'official' week of homeschooling - we would have broken up for the holidays now, if we weren't in lockdown still here in Leicester.  Seb had a couple of days off, but we did 70 days of 'Sebbie School' in total.  Not bad, and I think maybe he's even learnt one or two things.  :-)

Thank goodness he's only 8, I would have had problems teaching him if he was much older!  Though he learns a lot of stuff I never learnt at school, particularly where grammatical rules are concerned.  (The important thing in my book is that you realise what the correct grammar is, not that you know what it's called.  Hmm.)

We would have been heading off to North Essex for our summer holiday today.  Boo!  I wanted to see Sutton Hoo!  (I know that's not in North Essex.)  And visit Colchester Zoo.  And also see my parents...  Ah well.

School mental health activity

There was one activity in the worksheets the school had provided whose results made me laugh a little.  Seb has Aspergers and his view on the world is interesting at times.  He says one day he'll be a video game composer, and he spends a lot of his time humming various songs from games.  And sometimes re-enacting them with his body.  I can't really explain it.  But he often does 'Just Shapes and Beats' with his hands.  It's kind of endearing.

Anyway, the worksheet invited him to write down four songs that made him feel good, and he choose the following:

1. ColBreakz - GoodBye (from 'Geometry Dash')

2. Kenneth Young - Pig Riding (from 'Tearaway')

3. Nitro Fun - Final Boss (from 'Just Shapes and Beats')

4. Rainbowdragoneyes - Creatures ov Deception (from 'Just Shapes and Beats')

Out of those I'd have to say the one that makes me happy is 'Pig Riding'.  Tearaway has the nicest music.  I can't say the dubstep (or whatever it is, ok, I'm old) affects me in quite the same way.  

Seb said the music made him feel 'tingley and happy :-)'.  I'm not sure what game music I'd pick if I had to pick something that made me feel happy.  I don't tend to play the sorts of games that have that sort of music in them.  Maybe this......?

What music from games makes YOU feel 'tingley and happy' inside..?

Lockdown Life: Stampy's Home School!

While the rest of the country is going into the next phase of opening up, Leicester has taken a step back into more severe Lockdown once more.  (Thanks to Covid-19 we've now had 65 days of home schooling, one week to go until the supposed start of the summer holidays...)  To cheer ourselves up, we decided that part of Seb's home schooling this week (he does 'school' every morning) would involve Stampy's Wonder Quest series.

If you have a KS2 kid this really works, since the topics are things they'd be covering at school.  Hooray!

Wonder Quest is an edutainment children's web series from Disney's Maker Studios, created by Stampy (Joseph Garrett).  There are two series of it, which aired in 2015/2016.  It's set in Minecraft, and Stampy is in his usual Stampy Cat form.  Stampy and the Wizard Keen have to go on adventures to stop the evil wizard Heinous and the evil inventor Rama.  It's a fun series to watch!  It has loads of other YouTubers guesting in it, like StaceyPlays, iBallisticSquid, EvanTube and AmyLee, who are all in their usual Minecraft skins.  

It's funny, well made, and educational!  Yes, it really is.  As part of their adventures Stampy and the Wizard Keen have to do science and maths and stuff to solve problems!  Most of the things we had from Seb's school were English and Maths, so it's good to have some fun science to think about too.  It's pretty much at his level as well.  The thing we did yesterday was something he was supposed to learn at school but hadn't because he's been at home.  

As well as the longer story-driven episodes made in Minecraft, there are short more focused educational shows called 'I Wonder', which concentrate on the 'learning bit' of the longer episode.  These are animated rather than being Minecraft-style, so Stampy is like an actual anthropomorphised cat!  Seb's been watching Wonder Quest anyway, because he wants to, but I've taken some of these 'I Wonder' clips and used them in Sebbie School.

We did four topics this week.  

Topic One: Solids, Liquids and Gases

We watched this (though why are they boiling tea in the kettle?!) and then did a sorting activity I found online.  (Basically put the items into the solid/liquid/gas categories.)

Solids, liquids and gases sorting activity

Topic Two: The Solar System

Having watched this, and learnt about the sizes of planets and the order they go in, we wrote our own mnemonic to remember the order.  And completed another printable activity I found online.

Our mnemonic was: My Very Energetic Mermaid Just Swims Under Narwhals.  (At least, at some points that was what it was, it kept changing to even more stupid things...)

The planets in order

And yes, I know he spelt Jupiter "Jwoopita", he did that on purpose because he thought it was funny...

Topic Three: Parts of a Plant

With this one we did a bit of flower dissection, which was fun - I helpfully had an African Violet plant in the kitchen that had come out in lots of flowers.  We also labelled a couple of things I found online, and stuck the bits of dissected plant onto one of them.  

I know he definitely would have been learning about plants if he'd been at school, so at least he hasn't missed out on this vital information regarding anthers, sepals and stamens.  ;-)

Parts of a plant

Topic Four: Water Cycle

I would have loved to try the experiment in this one - perhaps we'll try it if we get a sunny day next week.  For some reason Seb found it oddly difficult to remember the bits of the water cycle.  Perhaps if I make him spin his weather dial thingummy on a regular basis he'll actually remember it...

The water cycle

That's all we've done so far, then.  We might do some more.  I'd highly recommend both Wonder Quest and the accompanying 'I Wonder' shows.

Kids definitely learn better if they like and respect the person teaching them.  Going back to these Wonder Quest shows and seeing that YouTubers like Stampy place value on kids learning stuff is fantastic.  Seb enjoys them and the teaching is clear.  The whole show is really well thought out.  So thanks, Stampy!  Thanks for demonstrating to Seb that learning is important.  Thanks for placing value on educating kids.  I appreciate it.  :-D