How do I sort by date with oldest first in icon view in Finder?

If you had labeled the instructions as "1. Instruction step one," "2. Instruction step two…," etc. then you could have displayed them in alphabetical order and done what you wanted.

If you ever find the answer, I'd love to know as well. How odd is it that you can do this. I tried several searches for this in software hacks, and applications that let you alter icon views and the like. Can't believe the limited interest in correcting it either.
I was looking for a way to display screen shots of various jpeg elements with files names that double as instructions in a tutorial. Icon view allowed me to see pictures in a large enough size to use as instructions with the corresponding file names. All I would have had to do was screen shots assembled into a PDF and I would have been done. Having to retype every instruction along with copy, and pasting into a new document and so forth is more than double the work for any set of pictorial instructions.
Maybe Garage Band or some other application is the workaround until then. I'll let you know if I ever find a better workaround, or the solution.

The workaround for sorting the icons, and including the file names is Adobe Acrobat Pro's create pdf portfolio option. This is an expensive workaround if you don't already have it. It is however exactly what I needed to customize the actual image rather than the icon it represented, as well as include the file names for sorting according to date created, oldest to newest.
Clearly not the simplest way to rearrange finder items, especially if they are not compatible with adobe in the even that you are sorting anything other than jpegs, or pdf's. However, if you are doing the kind of work that I do, (teaching) this is actually the solution that serves my needs best.

no, this is not possible.