Inspired somewhat by Miss Oh’s videos of her Let’s Play world, I decided that it would be nice to create something for parents of young Minecrafters.
When I first heard of Minecraft it sounded like it had a lot of potential for the Oh Waily kids to learn lots of new skills while having fun. So I went off and gave it a trial run. Just me. On my own.
I can tell you it was less than successful as the game comes with no instructions and there I was trying to work out how to do things. I managed to figure out the punching thing and the digging by hand thing but the crafting stuff just bamboozled me. While I’m all for exploration and figuring things out, if your young one chooses to play Survival (any version except Peaceful) and they don’t work enough things out before night-time, then they encounter the game’s googlies. This is likely to mean a quick end to the game and if they re-spawn (re-enter the game) they are likely to be very close to the bad guys again and the same quick end is likely to turn in to “Groundhog Day”. If your kids are very young or have a temperament that feels these sorts of defeats, then this could put them off from playing what is a very open-ended, creative, sandbox game.
Now there may be other videos and articles out there for parents to watch or read, so they can help with these very first steps, but I didn’t find them when we started. And since we’ve been at this for a little while now I have accumulated quite a bit of knowledge and resources to help my young’ens make the most out of their games. Frankly, now they’re the ones teaching me what to do and what not to. If we decide to make more than a basic introduction series of three or four videos, it’s possible that the Patch kids might take over the Guide videos. (Yes, I’m always angling for learning experiences.)
In the meantime, if you’re the parent of a young one desperate to give Minecraft a go and want a basic introduction to get them through the first night or two please stop over at our first foray into tutorials. Our intention is to put one out each week until we think we’ve covered enough of the basics that a young child can survive in order to do the exploration Minecraft is so good for.
If you have any questions, please feel free to leave a comment here or over on the video. We will do our best to answer them for you.
[kad_youtube url=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZmXcypfB0g” ]
The Pukeko Patch 
I think I’ve mentioned it before but we’ve never gone down the mine craft route. Instead we use project spark which is free from Windows 8.1 and above and on Xbox one. The variation in difficulty is entirely up to you and the tutorials are excellent
Sounds good.
Unfortunately we are a Mac household with no console games, so that option isn’t currently open to us. 🙂
And to be fair, it’s quite likely that the target market isn’t kids as young as mine, so finding information before beginning would be easier for older ones.
I really needed this when Miss9 started playing Minecraft. I tried my best to understand it, but she has outsmarted me again and I often ask her help which ends in a lot of “Oh Mum!”‘s.
Yes, if I could have found a tutorial like this at the beginning it would have been a much smoother introduction to Minecraft. I will most probably link to useful websites we’ve used as well, to allow for expanding knowledge from the basics.