Minecraft — Dad & Kid

About the videos your kid watches

• Most YouTube Minecraft is the PC version ("Java") or heavily modded. Your Switch runs Bedrock Edition — same game, but buttons, menus and some rules differ.
• House rule for both of you: when the screen disagrees with a video (or this guide), trust the screen. The game updates constantly.
• Your kid's video knowledge is real — let them be the ideas person while you drive the menus.

What each thing is

• Play — your worlds live here. The only button you need.
• Settings — visit once later for controls; world settings matter more.
• Marketplace — a real-money store (skins, worlds) priced in "Minecoins". Skip it — next step locks it.
• Dressing Room (under your character) — the free character creator is fine and fun; it also sells things, so do it together.
• Sign In / envelope icon — account stuff and ads. Ignore for now (step 07 handles the one sign-in you need).

Do these once

• Nintendo Account settings → require password for purchases. This alone stops accidental buys.
• Keep no stored card / zero eShop balance on the profile the Switch uses.
• Optional, most robust: give your kid a child account in a Nintendo family group with spending restrictions ON.

Set these

• World name — pick it together. This is the world you'll keep.
• Game mode → Survival. The real game: gather, craft, build. (Creative = infinite-blocks toy box; you can always make a second world for it.)
• Difficulty → Peaceful. What it really does: no monsters exist, your hearts refill by themselves, and the hunger bar never goes down — you cannot starve. Eating becomes optional fun.
• Hardcore → OFF (leave the scary toggle alone).

Flip these

• Show Coordinates → ON. Puts your position numbers on screen — the "how do we get home" lifeline. Not a cheat, costs nothing.
• Bonus Chest → ON. A free starter kit (wood, tools, food) next to where you first appear.
• World type: Infinite (the default — don't pick Flat).

On the Cheats tab

• Activate Cheats → ON, then Keep Inventory → ON. Now dying costs nothing: you wake up at your bed with everything still in your backpack.
• The honest price: this world stops earning Xbox achievements — collectible badges, nothing else. For a family world the trade is free. (You can keep a separate no-cheats world later if badges ever matter.)

Multiplayer tab, then go

• Multiplayer Game → OFF. That toggle is for ONLINE play with other consoles — it needs subscriptions and invites nag screens. Split-screen on your couch doesn't use it.
• Press Create. You're standing in your world.

Three one-time things

• Dock the Switch. Split-screen is a TV feature (officially docked-only; a Switch Lite can't do it at all).
• Controllers: one Joy-Con each is enough. Slide both off the console; your kid holds theirs sideways like a tiny gamepad — it fits 5-year-old hands better than anything you could buy.
• Make your kid a Switch profile (30 seconds): HOME → System Settings → User → Add User → pick an icon and their name. When it offers to link a Nintendo Account, choose skip/later — a plain local profile is exactly right.

Every play session

1. Dad starts Minecraft and loads the world — you must be standing IN the world; split-screen can't start from the menus.
2. Kid holds their Joy-Con sideways and squeezes SL+SR (the two small buttons on the flat rail edge) so the console notices it.
3. Kid presses + (or − on a left Joy-Con — whichever it has).
4. A profile picker appears → kid picks their own profile. Same profile every time — that's where their character and backpack live.
5. If any sign-in screen appears for the kid → skip/decline it.
6. The screen splits. You're both in.

How the split works

• Default is top/bottom halves (good on a wide TV). Prefer side-by-side? Settings → Video → Vertical Split Screen.
• Each half is its own full game — own camera, own backpack, own hands. The name over the other player's head is how you spot them in-world.
• Honesty about the Switch: it's the weakest console that does this. Two players is the sweet spot; expect the occasional stutter in busy scenes. Pottering around together, it's fine.

How the dot behaves

• The dot drifts left/right as you turn; center your view on it and walk.
• Little arrows on the dot mean they're above or below you (hills, caves).
• Sneaking hides you from the bar — which makes hide-and-seek an actual game you can play.

Backups that always work

• Coordinates (you turned them on): stand at home once, write the three numbers on a sticky note. Getting home = walking until the numbers match.
• Build a tall pillar with a torch by the front door — a lighthouse you can see from far away.
• Step 17's two beds: sleeping sets each player's home — worst case, everyone respawns at the house.

The movement set

• Left stick walk · right stick look around. The look-stick is the one that takes adults a day — move it slowly on purpose at first.
• B jump — but auto-jump is ON on Switch: walking at a one-block step climbs it automatically. Keep it on; small hands never have to time jumps.
• A sneak — while sneaking you cannot walk off an edge. Set Settings → Controls → Sneak: Toggle so one tap turns it on instead of holding.
• Click the left stick while walking = run.

The whole interaction model

• ZR (right trigger) = break / hit. HOLD it on a block — cracks grow, then it pops. Tapping does nothing; holding is the trick.
• ZL (left trigger) = place / use: put down a block, open a door or chest, eat, pet an animal. When in doubt, ZL.
• X = your backpack (the inventory). L/R = cycle through the 9 quick slots along the bottom of the screen.

Also right now

• If a bonus chest is sitting where you appeared (step 05), open it with ZL — free tools and food inside. Hover a slot and press A to take things.

How to read it

• Press X → the left panel lists things you can make right now (keep the "Craftable" filter on). Tabs down the side are categories; the magnifier tab searches by name.
• Highlight anything → the right panel shows its ingredients, with what you're missing marked. That's the game telling you what to go collect.
• Select it and press the craft button the on-screen legend names. Done.

Make your first three things

• Planks (from your logs) → Crafting Table (4 planks) → put the table in a quick slot and place it on the ground with ZL.
• Press ZL ON the placed table = the same screen, but with the full recipe list. Backpack = small recipes, table = everything.
• Moving items around: hover, A picks up, A puts down. That's all you need this week.

In order, at the table

• Sticks (from planks) → Wooden Pickaxe (3 planks + 2 sticks).
• Find grey stone — any hillside, or dig stair-steps into the ground. Hold ZR with the pickaxe in hand: collect ~10 cobblestone.
• Back at the table: Stone Pickaxe, Stone Axe, Stone Shovel, Stone Sword. Everything now breaks much faster.

Light it

• Coal is the black-speckled stone, common on surface rock faces. Mine a few with any pickaxe.
• Coal + stick = 4 torches. Place them on walls with ZL. Torches never set anything on fire — they're pure light.
• Put a torch pillar OUTSIDE by the door — your lighthouse for step 10.

Getting two beds

• Each bed = 3 wool + 3 planks. Wool: bop 3 sheep with ZR (they're fine — they just drop the wool), or craft Shears later for the gentle version.
• Place both beds side by side in the hut. Each player sleeps in their own bed (ZL on it, at night).

Rainbow sheep

• Pick flowers → craft them into dye (the crafting screen finds it). ZL the dye on a living sheep → the sheep turns that color, permanently. 16 colors exist.
• Shears (2 iron — the beige-speckled ore, one small mining trip) shear the colored wool and the sheep regrows it: an infinite rainbow-wool factory for building.

Boat rides

• Boat = 5 planks + a wooden shovel (a Bedrock quirk — the shovel is the paddle). Place it on water, ZL to hop in.
• Boats seat two. Kid rides with dad — or, later, the dog rides shotgun. Peak five-year-old content.

While you're there / back home

• Tame a cat: whack fish swimming in any river with your sword (no rod needed) to get raw fish → hold it, stand very still near a cat, let it come to you. Hearts = it's yours; it follows you home.
• Start a farm: wooden hoe on grass next to water = farmland; seeds come from punching tall grass; carrots straight from the village plots. Crops grow while you do other things.

The menu

• Wolf → dog: feed bones to a wolf in the forest until hearts burst out. No skeletons on Peaceful, so bones come from fish drops (on Bedrock roughly a quarter of fish drop one) or desert-temple chests.
• Fishing: rod = 3 sticks + 2 string (string: village chests, cave cobwebs, the wandering trader). Perfect lazy co-op; occasionally reels up treasure.
• Horse: empty hand, ZL to hop on, get bucked off, repeat until hearts. Steering needs a saddle — found in chests and by fishing, never crafted.
• A map of your world: craft the Locator Map (8 paper + a compass) — it draws the land and shows you as a moving dot. The plain 9-paper map has NO dot; always make the locator kind.
• Axolotls (pink cave salamanders): scoop one into a water bucket in a lush cave, carry it home, build it a pond.
• Parrot (jungles): tame with any seeds — and teach the one sad rule now: never feed a parrot a cookie (it dies, instantly, really).
• Frogs (swamps): catch tadpoles in a bucket, raise them at home.
• The building era: colored wool → colored concrete → the day you two are officially "good at Minecraft."