What age is did you start homeschooling? My son will be 4 in March and I’m going to homeschool him, but not really sure when or how to start. The co-op here doesn’t start until Kindergarten, so I’m having some struggles figuring out what to do for homeschooling him at this age.
Any advice for how to get my feet wet with a preschooler?
I think knowing a little bit about how the brain develops is helpful when starting a kids formal education.
Brain development occurs at different rates between individuals. Mostly what I'm referring to is the myelination of the nerves.
Myelin is the nerve coating, similar to the outer insulation of an electric cord. It's what makes the transmission of nerve impulses possible. Children process information more slowly because the myelin is not completely developed. And it's not always complete even at 20 years of age. It is also a process that continues throughout our lifetime. Since it also varies in development rate and in what areas of the brain develop more quickly you can have some 3 year olds capable of learning to read.
I say this because it was not something I was familiar with when I started teaching my boys. Until I started understanding this a little better I was frustrated with their lack of progress in certain areas. Like reading. My boys were not smooth readers until the ages of 7 and 8. My nephew pretty much taught himself to read at 4 while his older sister was still struggling at 7.
My Kid#2 also is dyslexic, so that was something else I found out about a little later. Being aware of what is and is not possible for them to learn at certain stages takes the pressure off. At least it did for me. I was able to relax, knowing that it would come when they were ready and I didn't have to be on someone else's time schedule.
But in a general sense I would say things like counting orally as you go about your day, looking at numbers on different items, say in the grocery store (a dozen eggs is 12, lets count them and make sure we have a dozen in this carton...) recognizing that letters make words, learning the names and their phonetic sounds etc.
So much can be done as a casual conversational type daily happening without sitting them down and giving them a "lesson" per se. This lays a foundation for them of practical learning, so even though they don't necessarily understand the concepts, they have some experience to draw from. Hope I'm making sense here. You are probably already aware of this, so I apologize if I'm being redundant.
Whatever you do end up doing, don't overface them with too much unknown stuff. There should be challenge, but you don't want to snuff the joy of learning out. I wish I could rewind and start over with the wisdom of my mistakes.
My boys were both very hands on learners and you can introduce a lot of learning that way. I wouldn't do more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time of "formal" educating at 4. You can do a few 20 minutes sessions at different times a day. That is just my opinion, and that would be my approach.
They're worth checking out, especially for a "hesitant" book learner. 
But it's worth it!
we hadn't taught him anything formally at that point. We tried public school for him but he was bored and kept getting into trouble. So we started homeschooling at 2nd grade.
