You don’t need to do anything at home - that is what the course is for. Anything you do before then could end up working against you. You will learn everything you need to know in the first 10 hours, the rest is just practice. You can do a bit of chair-flying to learn the checklists an drills but trust me, you will be ready before you use finish the course. The best thing you can do is save your self a fortune and get your IR(R) then CBIR.