I have always been a very eclectic curriculum user.  We began our homeschool adventures when my oldest was two.  I started reading books on whether or not we should homeschool.  Then, as more children and more books came along, my oldest was five and I needed to switch from "should I" to "how to".

We started using a classical style loosely following The Well Trained Mind.  I had quite a few problems with this choice because it seemed to be so humanistic.  The idea of my six-year-old focusing so hard on memorizing the pharaohs of ancient Egypt with little focus on Bible history concerned me.  So I used the Egermeier's Bible Story Book for our backbone in history and tried to frame the history of the world on that. 

Then I began to run across more books on how-to.  Books like The Charlotte Mason Companion, The Christian Unschooler, The Relaxed Homeschooler and Teaching the Trivium.  I was attending conferences and ran across the history-based and literature-based styles.  I went to a seminar by Kathryn Stout of Design-A-Study fame.  All of these resources helped to open up my thought process and break the mold in my mind of what school should look like.

That brings me to today.  I have continued to be very eclectic in what I piece together so that I do not become a slave to a box curriculum.  I have always been more partial to literature-based.  I utilized the Sonlight curriculum book lists last year and that worked well.  I was frustrated, though because of the volume of books.  I know that the key isn't to get through every book, but I do know that is the goal.  I love the books and they will always be used at some time in our "adventures".  My goal is to slow down.

I stumbled upon Amblesideonline and love it!  I love the book lists.  I love the schedules (I am not really good at that).  I love the fact that they have advanced books but they stress that you need to get through them slowly.  I have decided to use their schedule and combine a few years.  Then I will add in and take away from that (I am using Mystery of History and Apologia science). 

One of the things I value most about my homeschool personality is that I love change.  I don't change so much that my kids don't know what to expect from one day to the next, mind you.  I love the freedom using several things and change them out without uprooting my entire program.  The beauty of the title "Eclectic".