We started at the beginning, so I had a nice long time to acclimate, which doesn't help you.... but I know when I was starting to feel like I needed to get "serious", reading The Well Trained Mind was a good starting place. Not because we actually follow it closely at all (a few things, but not the whole plan...) but because it's so neatly laid out and makes it sound like something you can handle.

But having read it, I then happily proceeded to do my own thing. smile

What we actually do:

Math - Singapore, except this year (statistics)
Science - Singapore
History - Story of the World (which is not perfect, but easy... and sometimes easy is perfect)
Literature - we have a book group, but I also like Lightning Literature from Hewitt Homeschooling, and we kind of juggle those two
Language - we go a little nuts with language... Lingua Latina for Latin (excellent but not "fun"... I never know whether to recommend it or not...) and Pimsleur plus a reader and grammar workbook for Spanish, and we're dabbling in Russian vocabulary and handwriting with the help of Educational Fontware.

We do more (and go off on tangents - we're about to add Hindi and Nepali and Devanagari script!), but this is our "core". I assign work for a week at a time and give DS more or less leeway (depending on our schedule and my mood... LOL) in figuring out how any one day will go. Mostly he gets his work done in the mornings, leaving the afternoons free for extra classes -- flute lesson, book group, math circle, lego team, physics class, rock climbing, tennis, etc. None of those are our serious-hard-work-core schooltime, except maybe book group... but they all contribute. When it's up to me, DS does math, science, history and language daily, plus flute practice. When he chooses his schedule, he sometimes crams a whole week of science or math into one day.

I needed to know what I was aiming at before I could really start -- I actually made up the whole 12 year schedule of courses, and as silly as that sounds, we've not deviated too far from the general plan (except in terms of speed... LOL) But if I were starting now, I'd definitely suggest that you start small and add in slowly. Pick one subject, like math, that you know you can handle, and just do that for a week or two before you start anything else. It won't hurt anything to take it easy at first, and it lets you get your feet wet without drowning.

Hope this helps!!

Erica