Hi Chelle,
My first question would be to ask why you want to homeschool. What is your motivation behind your decision. This will greatly dictate what you do. Are you homeschooling for faith based reasons? Are your reasons academic? People home educate for various reasons, so their approaches will likely be different. We are beginning our 13th year of home education. We have graduated one, and haven't started one yet. We have 6 children. My youngest is 4. One thing I have found is that the younger ones learn so much from watching their older siblings. I let them "play" school while we are working, but I don't do anything formal with them until 5. We do read a lot, color a lot, ask about letters/numbers/colors/shapes, but all in a non-stressful, social environment. We let them enjoy their younger years without the burden of the responsibility of school. They have 13 years of school anyway,why burn them out so young? I totally understand your eagerness to get started. With your oldest only 3, I know the feeling of looking forward to just getting on with it. Believe me, it comes sooner than you might think, and it flies by. You might look at Before 5 in a Row if you feel you absolutely must do something more formal. It is gentle and sweet. You can also look into letteroftheweek.com, which will give you crafting ideas and book recommendations for each letter of the alphabet. You go through a different letter each week. And, the website is free. Remember that curriculum is only a tool. I used A Beka the first year because I was overwhelmed with the options out there. We hated it (it is workbook based). But, I used that year to figure out what we wanted to do. I read about different styles of homeschooling to see which I thought would suit our family best. Then, I researched inside of the method I landed on to find which of the curriculums in that category would best suit our worldview and personality. I landed on VeritasPress.com. At any rate, get the free catalog because it offers great literature selections (which you can buy or check out from the library). But, that was just our choice. Again, it's only a tool. As long as what you choose suits your worldview, then go for it. There are some curriculum companies that we would never go with because their view on evolution is not in line with what we believe. There are others that compromise in other areas (according to what we believe). So, you just have to sort and study to see what you truly might like. But, also, remember that you can always change your mind and go with something different if you find you don't like it afterall. People are always selling used stuff. Cost depends on what you want to spend. Some people spent thousands, some hundreds, some don't spend anything and only use the library. Set your budget and go with that. You shouldn't have to spend much of anything at this point. Scheduling is another thing. In this stage, you should just be fitting it in here and there with nothing too formal. Children who homeschool don't tend to need nearly as much time for school as their public schooled counterparts because they don't have to line up for stuff, they don't have to wait for the teacher to explain something to the student who has a million questions, they don't have to wait for everyone else to get the concept. They just do it. They have individualized instruction, their teacher KNOWS them and what they know, so she can tailor the lesson based on that. Even in the younger years, it is hard to get 4 hours of instruction/school in because it just doesn't take that long. Please feel free to send me a private message if you would like to discuss this further. There is much I could say, but I don't want to write a book. :)
