Newbie Question

Hey All,

Hopefully this question doesn't get crapped on too hard, but I'm posting it here because I'm sure to get some good information. Newbie networking guy trying to work toward CCNA to pivot from current position into another. I recently purchased some Cisco Switches and Routers, installed Packet Tracer and am just starting to play around.

So, the Cisco switch that I have has 24 LAN ports, a consol port for configuration and an ethernet management port. In a real world, enterprise environment, how would I connect my switch to my router? Do I use any of the 24 ports available? Do I use this management port? What if I want to link multiple switches together?

I am waiting to get my "CCNA for dummies" book, so I'm hoping this can answer some of those questions.