It allows you to present concepts quickly and easily and because the students can literally grasp the concepts you are teaching because they have their hands on base 10 manipulatives you will find that they achieve greater understanding in less time. This is no longer theory. We've had proven and stunning results for decades now.
I have put up many pages and many videos of actual lessons using base ten blocks to teach algebra, using algebra with base 10 blocks to teach basic operations to even very young children or autistic students. The point is you can teach math this way no matter what you back ground or experience with math is. if you are already a math teacher base 10 blocks will make you a more effective math teacher. If you are just starting out you will find you get better results faster with base ten blocks if you are a seasoned teacher with lots of experience you will find you no longer need to fail half your algebra class because you can make math acseesible to ALL of you students using base ten blocks.
If you are a homeschooler you can use base ten blocks and begin teaching math like a pro in no time. You will find that even if your math experience was poor you can teach a lot of things to your own kids and they will actually understand it. Factoring polynomials becomes child's play, solving for x, Pythagorean theorem, square roots and radicals percentages an more are EASY. All you need is a little initiative and and open mind. Take you time and you find lesson after lesson here and I often hear parents who are amazed that for the first time they understand distribution instead of just knowing a formula for what to do like FOIL.
One post couldn't possibly teach you how to best use your base ten blocks. But I can point you in the right direction. There has been some demand for a getting started page...so I will be working on that. Meantime, go to the home page at CRHOM and watch the short video with the little kid on the local news...this will give you an idea where you are going to eventually end up. Then watch the one hour overview. After that you can watch more vids or start reading about addition...which will lead you to multiplication and on the way you may do some subtraction and division.
Look where you can go with little kids. This seven year old is evaluating quadratics and it's child's play. Or you could just use these powerful tools for addition and maybe some place value.
Here we are playing with square numbers...again it shows you where we can go with ease. In between the vid above and the vid below check out this page on square numbers.
As long as you can count to nine and form a rectangle and tell if something is same or different we can pretty much go anywhere. Percentages for example or algebra are no problem. You don't need to know where the staircase leads just take the first step as my buddy Albert would say.