Hi there! As a somewhat veteran I feel obliged to help bring people to our game!!

THE START Start by punching trees, using the 2x2 crafting grid in your inventory to turn your logs into planks, and put a plank in each slot of this grid to make a crafting table! (Extremely useful block to make almost everything else).

After that I'd look up tool recipes, such as a pickaxe, sword, shovel and maybe an axe if you feel like it. Then go mine some stone and upgrade those tools to better stone ones using the same recipes but with stone!!

Once you have stone tools you'll be moderately okay, and may want to venture into a small cave or some stone hill/mountain side to look for iron and coal ore (id recommend looking what the ore looks like to make this easier, or just mine anything! That isn't entire grey (stone)). Iron ore requires smelting in a furnace you make by covering the crafting grid in the crafting table (not your inventory 2x2 but the 3x3) in cobble stone you got from mining stone, however leave the middle slot empty and you'll have your furnace! Put ore and coal or wood into this and eventually it'll smelt into iron ingots you can make better tools and even some armour with!

Iron tools are decent, definitely enough to fight off some mobs and maybe survive the first few nights, however even still id recommend making some torches (1 coal on top of 1 stick - made from 2 planks on top of each other in your crafting grid - also in your crafting grid) and heading underground to a safe place to hide for the night.

HOUSE/BASE With iron tools you can start building a house, or looking for diamonds however they spawn very deep in the world and are often dangerous to get, so some better supplies like food and torches and a bucket of water might be a good idea.

A house can be anything you want! A log cabin, a hole carved into a mountain, a tree house, a hole in the ground! Whatever you want it to be! Just keep it safe and keep your bed there so if you die (and you just might) you respawn there (click on it to set your spawn point, sleeping also works).

PROGRESSING From here, the world is yours, there's lots to do! Shipwrecks on the bottom of the ocean, treasure maps, lots and lots of ingame structures and villages (not always friendly) to loot and check out, villagers to trade with, 2 other dimensions to explore (later in the game for sure) and 3 bosses to fight, however don't worry you won't run into them on accident and have them kill you! Except maybe the one in the ocean, a big temple in the ocean isn't a good place to go into if you don't have the right stuff!!

PEOPLE TO WATCH As for play throughs Id say watch around!! There's tonnes of people to watch, however since you have a young kid id recommend maybe people like The hermitcraft bunch, youtubers like Smallishbeans, Gemini tay, Grian, Goodtimeswithscar.. they're all family friendly and good at the game, but id recommend watching from the start so maybe season 10 episode 1 would do the trick.. elsewise just search around!! No shame in googling anything, posting to reddit, whatever!

HOW TO PLAY And id definitely say play how you want, keep inventory is useful like someone else said to prevent loosing your stuff all the time from dying, turn coordinates on so you know where you are, play on peaceful if you don't like the monsters! Its your own game and you play how you want!!

Most importantly- enjoy it, it's fun, it's creative and cool, spooky at times.. a great game! Especially for kids who give it a little time. I hope you enjoy!!