Hi there i am a total newbie and an old man so please have mercy on my poor soul 
My goal is to have 7 LEDs in a row; each one correlating with a different day of the week.
EXAMPLE: On Sunday, the first LED turns on. On Monday the first LED turns off, and the next LED turns on, thus.
I have an arduino starter kit with breadboard, and sensor kit which includes a DS3231 RTC.
Should I be able to make this work with what i have? What steps might I take to execute this project?
I do have some basic coding experience, i know i need to find a library to use with the DS3231 RTC.
Any advice is helpful!
Yes, you can do that. First set up the LEDs with current limiting resistors, and learn how to control them.
Then, learn how to use the DS3231 -- there are thousands of examples. Once you have that down, it will be trivial to read the day and set the appropriate LED.
cool thanks - i have already set up some LEDs on a breadboard and loaded some code to manipulate them - looks like i am doing things in the right order - i will check out DS3231 tutorials - thanks
My goal is to have 7 LEDs in a row; each one correlating with a different day of the week.
It looks like you are building a 'retiree's calendar'.
There are several good libraries available, the one I used most recently is DS3232RTC by Jack Christensen. Don't be put off by the name, it works with the DS3231 as well.
In any case you want to look for a library that pulls out the 'Day' function which gives you a number 1-7 corresponding to the day of the week. You should be able to figure it out from there.
Don