This is our first year of homeschooling.  I have been intereasted in it for sometime now but did not know much about the homeschool life.  We decided to give it a try after the past couple of years of public school being a not so pleasent experence.  All summer long I researched, read and looked up just about everything I could find on the subject.  I have a friend who also homeschools and I'm sure I drove her crazy talking to her about how she does it, but I guess it's because of her that helped in my decision to H/S.  As far as using one company for our curriculum we don't really do that.  Like for my 7yos we use Saxon math, Alpha Omega Science, Abeka History, Spectrim Languge Arts and for spelling we use McGraw Hill Spelling.  The Pizza Hut in our town does the Book-It program (which H/S kids can also partipate in) so thats what we do for reading he is in 2nd grade and he has to read four books a month that I think are on his level (he tries to sneek picture books past me!!).  For my 9yos we started out with the same type of curriculm for him on the 4th grade level but after three months of him complaining that it was to easy we moved him up to 5th grade and he uses the Alpha Omega Switched-On-Schoolhouse.  It's a computer based program, and he is no longer saying that it is to easy!!