What style of homeschooling do you use?

So often my post ideas stem from discussions on other blogs. My favorite new blog is The Wine Dark Sea by Melanie Bertinelli, wife of famous Domenico of Bettnet. She had a lively discussion of the book "How Children Learn". I haven't read it but I do have a similar philosophy of education style being tailored to the individual child's learning style,as long as they learn the basics. I hear the commenters who say this sort of 'soft' thinking has ruined the public school system, and I want to posit this response, as I too was in a failing 1970's 'open classroom' experiment. Perhaps that style of child-centered teaching can't work in a school setting, as there isn't enough knowledge of or supervision of the children. Perhaps child-centered learning was meant to be done only at home.
'Tidal homeschooling' could explain my 9 year journey as well. To some it may seem indecisive to switch programs and levels of structure year to year, but it's just my way of listening to the children while keeping their future in mind. I used a fair amount of workbooks this year to cover needed skills, yet we read from 4REAL Charlotte Mason reading list, doing the narratives afterward.This is the result: yesterday my 9 year old daughter came to me with shining eyes after two hours in the backyard documenting signs of spring in her nature notebook, and breathlessly told me she's working on a book of animal stories like Beatrix Potter. She is compiling bits of learning from all over the curriculum; art, literature, writing, nature study, and cinema (we've just seen "Miss Potter").This lets me know that my curriculum is spot on!

I think the Holy Spirit works in this if you invite Him. I have a preschool daughter with Down Syndrome, whose learning style is quite unique, and I recently read "When Slow is Fast Enough" to understand how to meet her educational needs and coordinate the therapies she receives with the rest of her education. I don't know any other place than home where this could be done successfully.