Hi!
DH and I just recently made the firm decision to home school after meeting HEAPS of people who home school and being VERY impressed with how the children behave and carry themselves.
I am a trained primary school teacher and have worked in the schools both here in Australia and in the United States as well.
I am generally unimpressed with formal, public (and most private) education programs and feel that since I would be supplementing HEAPS I (and my children) would be much better off if I do it myself.

Banshi:
Thanks for your post - I have a feeling I will be picking your brain a lot in the months to come.
DS#1 is nearly 4.5 years old and I'm not planning to start anything formal until the year he turns six. For the time being I'm enjoying the fact that he is learning HEAPS just with our every day life. Already he knows all his numbers and letters, can recognize and spell his name, and is starting to ask me to read signs and directions to him. He can count to 100 with minimal help (usually at the 10's) and he does the rest. Already I know that he would be somewhat bored in a preschool program.
Thank you SO much for the list of books - I'm keen to start doing some REAL research and reading as I plan how and what I want to do. Can I find these books in my local library? Or will I need to buy them?

It is late (12:30am) and it has been a rough week with both the boys being very sick PLUS the torrential rain - so I need to make myself go to sleep but I wanted to get started in this thread before I forgot for another night!
I am keen to hear what other parents are doing and to get ideas and thoughts on how to get started when the time is right!
Specifically I'm interested in hearing who uses specific curriculum and what kinds they use...
how to home school on the cheap...
what kind of routine people follow for "school" each day...

I hope that gets things started and I'll look forward to hearing back from people!

Thanks,
Heidi