The first circuit is an LED, a resistor, and a 9V battery. It is deliberately boring. The point is not the LED: it is learning what the breadboard does behind its grid of holes.
The hidden wiring
Each row of five holes is connected internally. The long rails down the sides run the full length of the board and are meant for power and ground. The gap down the middle is sized for chips to straddle. Every wiring mistake a beginner makes on a breadboard comes from forgetting one of those three facts, so check them against your board before building anything.
Why the resistor is not optional
An LED does not limit its own current. Connect it straight across the battery and it takes as much current as the battery will give, briefly. The resistor sets the current: around 470 ohms puts a comfortable 15 milliamps through a typical red LED from 9V. Do the arithmetic with Ohm's law from lesson one: nine volts minus the LED's two, divided by 470 ohms.
When it lights, change something and predict the result before you touch it. A bigger resistor should dim it. Reversing the LED should switch it off entirely, because a diode only conducts one way. The habit of predict, then test, is the actual lesson.