Welcome, Bookworm Jo! (Love your um - name? handle? - whatever they call it, it's great!)
I'm in Ohio - here we just have to tell the state what we plan to use, but we pick it.
I'm an eclectic sort of person, I guess. I like the freedom of being able to do what fits at a given moment.
For instance, the other day, we were reading a story about rice. I realized my daughter had NO idea how rice was grown (despite the fact that *I* used to live in a rice-growing country), so we googled images of terraced rice paddies (they're beautiful to look at - my dd decided they were in heaven, not on earth!)
https://www.google.com/search?sourceid= ... w&tbm=ischThen we found a great Nova site that told how they're built:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/rice-paddy.htmlI think that's something that's easier to do if you're constructing it yourself.
I also suspect that all-in-one curriculum sets might be something that fits your child (or you) in one subject, but not in another. What if you order the whole set, and find that while it works for teaching your kid math, it's just not working for reading?
I like to be able to custom fit every lesson.