Start doing your research now. You are right -- it is a “big thing” and you will be able to do a much more thorough yet much more relaxed job of choosing the path you and your children are going to take if you start now and just keep doing a little research here and a little research there.
To start, read this (ignoring the typos) :
Home Schools: The Hope Of America
If this approach seems interesting to you, here are links to some other articles by the same author :
Your comment that you think it may be more than you can handle etc. is a concern of most parents looking into homeschooling. One way to avoid the pressure on you and still get a great education for your children is to use a style similar to that used in the Robinson curriculum. In short, the key concepts are :
1. That the you teach the child to read and then the child becomes educated by devouring books rather than by mommy standing up in front of them and lecturing them every day.
2. That they use great books to learn from. Example - Why have them learn about the civil war by reading a modern book written by some unknown and probably indoctrinated post-grad student when they could learn about it by reading the autobiographies, etc. of those who actually were there and led the war efforts?
3. There is no reason to spend a fortune on homeschooling materials since most of the great literature and books are now public domain. Thus you can either get them for free via the internet or get a compilation of them on CD for a comparatively nominal cost. (Robinson Curriculum is set up as every book needed for K-12 (except math) for $200 (plus costs to print out materials on your printer at home)
Listen to the audio files here to learn more.
By the way, if you are interested in this approach you can get more for less cost here or as I said earlier, you can find your books online at places like this where you can access over 20,000 books online for free.
My wife and I have a two year old with a daughter due in July. Our decision is to go with a combination of the two philosophies I’ve mentioned above. Our goal is not just to have well-educated children, but to develop leaders in the process.
There are literally thousands of other educational options available for you out there. Some are great, some not-so-great. Some are teacher intensive, others are not. And of course, you can find materials focused on anything : Christian, character-building, etc.
I’m sure that whatever you choose -- you’ll do fine, because the research you are putting into it now will result in a great education for your kids later.