To start survival mod click create new world. name it something you know what it is. i have a lot of worlds so they are called things like "custom items for adventure maps" and "survival world with emerald_lord" ya' know that kinda stuff. if you are a noob i would suggest you go to "More World Options" and click "Starting chest", at least i think thats what its called. then when you are satisfied with the settings click "create world" and now you have your survival world. WARNING: These things called "Creepers" come out at night a blow you up if you arent in your house, aswell as blow your house up if you are outside next to your house.

To start making your house. to do that we will need wood. NOTE: If you did click on "starting chest" look for a chest with torches to get some wood. The chest will contain usually wood or rarely stone tools, wood planks, raw wood, and apples. if you dont have a starting chest try to find a tree. NOTE: to break any blocks you need to hold down left-click. they can be in the forests, tundras, mesa, basically just not caves, deserts and other dimensions. when you have about 10-32 logs go back to where you spawned. and start making basic items. the first thing we want to make is a crafting table or workbench depending on how long you've played. to make that we need wood. press ESC and open your inv. you will see a 2x2 grid that gets lighter when you hover over it. place all of your logs in a single slot in the grid. when you do that you will see 4 wood planks appear. NOTE: if you have more than 64 (the max minecraft item number) put one in one square at a time

Shift-click the wood planks to get them. now that we have wood we will make a crafting table. to do that put 1 wood plank in each slot of the crafting grid. if there is more than 1 oak plank in each stack that is fine. if you dont have enough stacks to fill it up right click the stack and it will split in half. do the same thing as before and click it and drag it into your inv. and then click and drag the wood in there aswell. now place the crafting table by right clicking. now right click the crafting table. when you do this you should see a 3x3 grid. the next thing you want to do is make sticks by putting a wood plank in slot B2 and slot C2. and click it as many times you like for the amount of sticks you need. to see more crafting recepies click this link: www.minecraftcrafting.org.
now to make a set of wood tools. to make a wood pickaxe place a stick in slot B2 and C2 and planks in slot A1 A2 and A3.
for an axe move the planks in slot A3 to slot B1. for a sword place a stick only in slot C2 and then place wood planks in slot A2 and B2.