Finding Your Village
Your child’s support system changed. They need a place to rebuild it with kids who get it.
Moves, divorce, school changes, illness, loss, a change in care or other major transitions can leave kids feeling disconnected from the people and routines that once made them feel grounded.
Maybe your child is avoiding their new school, anxious about how to make friends or cope with everything that’s changed. Maybe the words for how they’re feeling come out as behavior instead, because they don’t have the words yet.
Finding Your Village brings together children going through similar changes, kids who understand what it feels like when a support system shifts. Through Minecraft, guided conversation, and hands-on activities, kids build friendships, find the words for what they’re experiencing, and become part of a consistent online community.
Here's what parents say after completing the program:
Why Finding Your Village uses Minecraft as the practice space
As a creative arts therapist, I’ve had a lot of kids show up to session and not want to talk. Their week was “fine.” Everything is “good.” No elaboration, nothing to work with.
That’s where Minecraft becomes the actual therapeutic intervention, not just the backdrop for one. Life already feels chaotic, unpredictable, and out of their control. The Realm starts out feeling that way too.
In the early phase, while kids are still getting to know each other, the work is foundational: getting comfortable being on camera, not talking over one another, setting and respecting boundaries, owning a mistake and repairing it, working with the group instead of off on their own.
As the phases go on, something shifts. Kids start to feel safe enough in the room to actually talk about what’s going on. They get “me too” moments and peer support that a one-on-one therapy session can’t give them. And as they keep working together, the Realm itself starts to feel like something they have a hand in, a group build, imaginative play, assigned roles, communicating what they need and what’s next.
By the later phases, kids aren’t just coping with something unpredictable, they’re building leadership and life skills inside it.
I’m Victoria Prisco, a Special Education Teacher and Creative Arts Therapist, and I’m present in every session. Kids join a live, weekly one-hour Google Meet while playing together in a private Minecraft Realm. Seeing one another while they play gives us opportunities to work on conversation, nonverbal cues, emotional expression, joining a group, and staying connected when things don’t go as planned.
Building Skills Between Sessions
Concurrent to online sessions, each child works from a Digital Adventure Workbook and a reward system. This turns the hour together into something more than play.
The workbook is completed at home, and completed pages are brought into group to share, which makes you part of the process too.
The work progresses with each phase. It starts with goals, reflections, and About Me exercises, then moves into worry worksheets as kids grow more comfortable sharing with the group. Creative arts therapy exercises and executive function worksheets that help kids plan and organize for Show & Tell appear in every phase.
Kids also work from a reward system each phase. They earn collectible, trading-card-style Skill Cards for demonstrating specific social skills, and printable 8×10 Character Awards for showing the qualities of a good friend. There are 24 Skill Cards and 6 Character Awards across the full year.
See what each phase focuses on
September Enrollment Is CLOSED
FALL group is full. TWO spaces available for January 19th
Complete the form to Enroll through Self Pay or Verify Benefits
Quick Check Before You Enroll
Enrolling in this educational and therapeutic program should be a decision made with the intention that your child is ready to learn social and friendship skills.
Spots are limited, and enrollment is by phase or by year. Tuition is non-refundable, and there's a $70 fee for any session your child is enrolled in but misses. These policies exist to protect a consistent learning environment, one your child can actually grow in.
Please take the time to make sure you have what you need, and that your child has the abilities to participate, before enrolling.
Kids need their own Minecraft Bedrock account and a device to play it on, plus a separate device for Google Meet.
We use Bedrock because it works on almost any device, from a computer to a tablet, but it doesn't work on Mac. If your child is currently playing on a computer, they may actually be playing the Java edition, so it's worth double-checking which one they have.
Kids should already know the basics of Minecraft: how to log into a Realm, how to update the game when a new version releases, and how to place a block and join a group build.
Groups can get chaotic at first, with everyone talking over each other. Early on, Victoria mutes kids so the group can hear one person at a time. Admin controls don't allow her to unmute a child from her end, so kids need to know how to unmute themselves rather than staying on mute for the rest of the session.
Minecraft is kid-driven, on purpose. It's meant to mimic the lunchroom, the playground, a team sport, a playdate, unstructured, loud, and unpredictable, the same way real peer environments are. There are no aides, no 1:1 staff, no accommodations built into that space. Kids are intentionally asked to participate independently, no adult in the room, so that the skills they build in the group can actually transfer to those spaces.
Check in with yourself: can your child self-soothe? Can they regulate themselves on a call? If they need to keep leaving the call for a parent, they aren't present enough to work on skills or earn skill cards. Do you feel comfortable allowing your child to participate independently?
Kids will process and share workbook pages with the group. Does your child have the language to navigate therapeutic workbook pages, naming a feeling, describing what happened, explaining what they'd do differently? And at home, do you have the bandwidth to walk your child through these pages when they're assigned, and make sure they actually get done?
The workbook isn't optional homework on the side. It's part of how a child earns Skill Cards and Character Awards, so a child who isn't completing pages isn't getting the full value the program is built to give.
Victoria coaches and recognizes specific moments as they happen inside that kid-driven environment, a paused reaction, a kept boundary, a repaired conflict. Kids are expected to work through disagreements and recover from a hard moment on their own in order to earn Skill Cards and Character Awards.
The group runs on one rule: treat others with kindness. If a child is intentionally mean to a peer or breaks something someone else built, they're placed in visitor mode for 10 minutes. In visitor mode they stay in the Realm and can watch and talk, but they can't place or break blocks.
If a child ends up in visitor mode three times in one session, and that happens again the next session, and again the session after that, three sessions in a row, they'll be asked to leave the program. A child who spends half of group in visitor mode isn't practicing or learning the social skills the group is for. This group setting can't change bullying behavior, and it isn't fair to the peers who are there to play and connect.
Kids aren't separated by diagnosis or ability. They're grouped by what's going on in their lives, so they can have real "me too" moments and build genuine community, connection that lasts beyond the program. That's why there are three tracks instead of one. If this specific group doesn't sound like the right fit for your child, one of these other two might be exactly right.