Homeschool Curriculum, yes or no?

I have already written about why we chose to homeschool in a previous blog, but the next question I am inevitably asked is "what curriculum do you use??". It is always asked in a rushed and almost illicit fashion, as if it is a trade secret. For me, since my husband and I are former teachers, I don't use a specific curriculum. One of my beefs with our current education system is that we are married to "the curriculum". I go to our state's education website and look at the state standards for the grade levels I am teaching. I transfer these standards into an empty document so I can cut and paste them as I need to for the year. I begin with the science and social studies standards and work backwards. For example, if the social studies standard is "can differentiate between city and rural areas, identify what belongs in a city vs. what belongs in the country, lifestyles, etc." I would then devise a unit around that topic. Even better, try and fold in a few science ones while I'm at it. I teach smarter not harder.
Formal curriculums are too much work. You end up teaching so many lessons for too few standards. I want more bang for my buck. So, using the above example I devised a unit about New York. I picked New York because it has well known and defined city and rural areas. We learned about New York city, tall buildings, taxi and subway rides, high rises and central park. We ate NY style pizza, gelato and most importantly, wrote travel journals about it all. When you start with science and social studies, writing and language soon follow. We read books by NY authors and looked up statistics on the Internet. We met with friends who used to live in upstate NY on a horse farm, and wrote letters back and forth to "city" and "country" cousins describing what we found there. Using subway maps we calculated trip routes and made budgets for excursions. Covered a whole lotta standards there. There were history lessons, science lessons and more. We got the whole picture, instead of just a few facts. And most of all...it was fun. For everyone.
We homeschool year round, because our adult lives are lived working year round. We take time off here and there like you would for vacation as an adult. I love that I can take the extra time to indulge my children's passions and use them to educate. My son loved the movie CARS and collected all the characters. I used these cars and his obsession to teach colors, sorting, counting, addition, subtraction, reading...all while we played. What a blessing for everyone. No math worksheets, no need to circle the group with the most teddy bears. For now, we enjoy a less formal curriculum model. One thing I learned as a teacher: be flexible. Students change from year to year so maybe in a few years we will have to revisit the model. But it works for us and thankfully I don't have to get it by the school board!