Breadboards....I don't understand.

I am very new to Arduino. I just recently ordered a breadboard, a bunch of LEDs, some buttons, and resistors to play with. I am able to control a pair of LEDs directly plugged into the Arduino chip, but want to use a breadboard, but don’t quite understand how to connect them or how they work. If someone can help me to understand that I would greatly appreciate it.

I found a tutorial or two online, but they don’t use an Arduino chip with the breadboard, but rather a microprocessor connected to the breadboard. Which only added to my confusion.

Jeremy,

Let’s start with a basic question: By “Arduino chip”, do you mean one of these:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/11021

or one of these:

http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9061

or something else?

More generally, if you include links to the product pages in your posts, you’ll get much better answers.

Eric