Hello Angela and welcome First of all it depends on how your students will be enrolled in the courses on your site. For example at my old school (a high school) all students were automatically enrolled into their necessary courses so there was no point displaying courses on the front page - instead it was used for announcements and promo of the school.
On the other hand, if it is a site where students can create their own accounts and/or sign up for courses using self-enrolment then they need to be able to see at least the types of courses on offer. In this case I would suggest showing categories on the front page - and then students can click into them to see individual courses they want to enrol in.
Note too that you can change the display of the front page courses depending on whether they are logged in or not - so you might want to show categories when they are not logged in and then when they are logged in, have the front page show only the courses they are enrolled in.
Other sites use fancy themes which show courses with accompanying graphics - others show all the courses if the site only has a few courses. It very much depends on the individual organisation.
Perhaps you can give some information about the organisation and courses offered and learners to give people a better idea. And do you have a custom theme or are you using a standard Moodle theme?