I will chime in here, but take any of what I say with a heap of salt, as we've only been homeschooling for 3 weeks now. We are all over the map with curriculum, but I knew going in that "school in a box" would not work. We didn't join a charter school, although that is a popular option for many of the homeschoolers we know.
The best advice I've received is not to buy a lot of stuff at first. Wait and see. Borrow books from other homeschoolers, to see if you like them. See what you can find from the library.
If you have a local homeschool group, join it. Better still if it's a gifted homeschool group, although those are harder to find. They will have information about local classes, coops, and events that you otherwise might never know about.
FWIW, I haven't picked out a language arts curriculum yet, so we haven't done any. I want us to both be comfortable homeschooling, rather than stress over covering every single subject every week.
And yes, the amount of available curricula out there is totally overwhelming! I wound up making a Word doc for each subject and adding names of books and websites as I came across them.
