My wife and I have four kids all of them homeschooled. We made the decision when my oldest was in 3rd grade. Up until they are 5 don't worry too much about adop

My wife and I have four kids all of them homeschooled. We made the decision when my oldest was in 3rd grade. Up until they are 5 don't worry too much about adopting a rigid formal homeschooling plan. Just use everyday situations to cover the basics, ABC's, 123, basic addition, subtraction etc. Use every "why" question from them as an opportunity to turn it into a simple science lesson. If you don't know the answer tell them lets go look it up. Just get them used to the process of how to seek answers. After they are 5 you need to formalize it more, start to think about what it is you want you child to learn and start to form a schedule of subjects that they need to know. Understand that as they grow and become more independent that they need to be able to take over this schedule and do more and more things that they are interested in. For example if they like Chemistry let them opt to do more science in Chemistry over Astronomy. As for curriculum, up until about 3rd grade it does not matter all that much, because you are dealing with reading writing and basic arithmetic. The last one being one one that curriculum is the most important for. We personally used Math-U-See and like it pretty well, but more and more for our older child we have been using http://www.khanacademy.org/ http://www.khanacademy.org/ as a resource for her. One thing to beware of is that there are a lot of religious organizations in homeschooling, I have nothing wrong with religion per-say (I attend church and read the Bible) but I tend to not teach my children Science from text with religious affiliation, just as I don't teach them from text with an environment or activist affiliation. I share common beliefs with some of those groups, but for science I want just the facts with no agendas. Religion or environmental concerns are a separate study in my household. I say this because we have had to filter some of the science books provided to us from other homeschooling families.