So I have made my way in the Kurso de Esperanto up to Leciono 5, the first correlative lesson. This stuff is breaking my head open. I'm finding it to be very confusing and hard to remember. There are so many words and so many of them look and sound the same.

Does anyone have any tips or resources that can help with learning the correlatives?

While appearing overwhelming at the first sight, the correlatives, la tabelvortoj, work quite nicely. By a coherent way they replace a lot of small words, which you otherwise had to learn by heart.

While all the correlatives consist of two parts, they are single words (like you can't make verbs out of them). I think, you're best off by grasping the lead parts first:
 

• i : something undefined, e.g. io : something
  
• ti : demonstrating ones, e.g. tia : that kind
  
• ki : asking ones, e.g. kiu : who
  
• ĉi : generalising ones, e.g. ĉie : everywhere
  
• neni : negating ones, e.g. nenies : nobody's

La teorio Nakamura teaches the correlatives gradually and pretty much in order of frequency, i.e. first those that are needed most often. Just read the text of a lesson, do its exercises, have a break and keep going. If something remains unclear, don't panic. Don't try to memorise them all at once. You will get a change to repeat those and likely in a later context you'll grasp the meaning and use of a certain correlative, that felt impossible in the beginning.

I also find the correlatives confusing, hard to remember, and hard to use. The Ido system is much clearer and easier for me.

bartlett22183:I also find the correlatives confusing, hard to remember, and hard to use. The Ido system is much clearer and easier for me.

The Ido system is not logical at all for someone who does not speak an Indo-European language. Ask the users from China, Finland, Iran or Japan here what they prefer.

Maybe they aren't simple in look for the beginners,but you'll find that in fact they're very logical.
You can make a form of them in order to master them clearly.
(All of them are here: https://lernu.net/gramatiko/tabelvortoj )

The table doesn't give you an immediate idea of how useful or common certain of the forms are. The best plan is to learn first those that you are more likely to encounter, rather than trying to digest the table in its entirety.

And to get them stuck in you head, it might be helpful to learn by heart some example uses. So let's start with the K words

Kion vi volas -what do you want?
Mi ne scias kion ŝi volas- I don't know what she wants.

Kiu vi estas - who are you?
Kiu esta la plej malmultekosta - which is the cheapest?
La muŝo kiun manĝis la araneo - the fly the spider ate.

Kien vi iras - where are you going?
De kiu lando vi estas - where do you come from?

Kiel vi bone scias - as you well know.
Mi ne scias kiel fari - I don't know how to do it.

Kiom kostas - how much is it?
Kiomas la horo - what is the time?

Kiam alvenos la trajno de Parizo - when will the Paris train get in?
Neniu scias kiam la pandemio finiĝos - nobody know when the pandemic will be over

Kia and kies are less frequently used.

Zam_franca:

bartlett22183:I also find the correlatives confusing, hard to remember, and hard to use. The Ido system is much clearer and easier for me.

The Ido system is not logical at all for someone who does not speak an Indo-European language. Ask the users from China, Finland, Iran or Japan here what they prefer.

There is a difference between being logical and being familiar or easy to use. The E-o correlatives may have a certain structural logic to them, but that does not necessarily make them easier or less confusing to use for everybody, if their minds do not run along those tracks. Not everything that is "logical" is always easy. And I was referring to myself, not speaking for everyone. (And incidentally, Farsi, spoken in Iran, is an Indo-European language.)

Metsis:

• i : something undefined, e.g. io : something
  
• ti : demonstrating ones, e.g. tia : that kind
  
• ki : asking ones, e.g. kiu : who
  
• ĉi : generalising ones, e.g. ĉie : everywhere
  
• neni : negating ones, e.g. nenies : nobody's

I learned correlatives this way, and I think is the only right way to do it. First learning the beginnings, and then learning little by little the endings. It took me several days because they are a lot but I never found them hard to learn, or confusing. Although may be it's very important to know well enough own mother tongue to not find them confusing, but if I think of English language the similarity is there:

i = some + (thing, body, time, way, reason...)
ki = wh-words + (where, who, when, how -which way-, why...)
ti = that + (related to wh-words)
ĉi = every + (body, thing, time, way, reason...)
neni = no + (body, thing, time, way, reason...)

Is quite similar to English and ok, kiu is for people and things and maybe there is something else that you have to keep in mind but, really, from an English speaker point of view, to call that confusing is crazy.

Ĝis, Novatago (blogo / 7 + 1)

Metsis:While appearing overwhelming at the first sight, the correlatives, la tabelvortoj, work quite nicely. By a coherent way they replace a lot of small words, which you otherwise had to learn by heart.

While all the correlatives consist of two parts, they are single words (like you can't make verbs out of them). I think, you're best off by grasping the lead parts first:
 

• i : something undefined, e.g. io : something
  
• ti : demonstrating ones, e.g. tia : that kind
  
• ki : asking ones, e.g. kiu : who
  
• ĉi : generalising ones, e.g. ĉie : everywhere
  
• neni : negating ones, e.g. nenies : nobody's

La teorio Nakamura teaches the correlatives gradually and pretty much in order of frequency, i.e. first those that are needed most often. Just read the text of a lesson, do its exercises, have a break and keep going. If something remains unclear, don't panic. Don't try to memorise them all at once. You will get a change to repeat those and likely in a later context you'll grasp the meaning and use of a certain correlative, that felt impossible in the beginning.

Thanks. I found an eBook on Amazon called Mastering the Correlatives in Esperanto: Learning from Examples. I bought it and it seems somewhat helpful.

It seems that at least a handful of the correlatives though not only have multiple meanings depending on the context, but many of them also have meanings that seem nearly identical to the meanings of other correlatives so that it can be hard to know which one to go with.

It looks like La teorio Nakamura is the course here on Lernu? How extensive is that course? How long should it take and what should one's language level be when completed?

sudanglo:The table doesn't give you an immediate idea of how useful or common certain of the forms are. The best plan is to learn first those that you are more likely to encounter, rather than trying to digest the table in its entirety.

And to get them stuck in you head, it might be helpful to learn by heart some example uses. So let's start with the K words

Kion vi volas -what do you want?
Mi ne scias kion ŝi volas- I don't know what she wants.

Kiu vi estas - who are you?
Kiu esta la plej malmultekosta - which is the cheapest?
La muŝo kiun manĝis la araneo - the fly the spider ate.

Kien vi iras - where are you going?
De kiu lando vi estas - where do you come from?

Kiel vi bone scias - as you well know.
Mi ne scias kiel fari - I don't know how to do it.

Kiom kostas - how much is it?
Kiomas la horo - what is the time?

Kiam alvenos la trajno de Parizo - when will the Paris train get in?
Neniu scias kiam la pandemio finiĝos - nobody know when the pandemic will be over

Kia and kies are less frequently used.

Thanks. I will try to learn these tonight.

One thing I have noticed is that, in some cases, the supplied definition does not really tell you the meaning of the word. It seems that you can only really get a sense of the word through examples.

It seems that Kiu can be either who or which?