I've been reading about various ideas and approaches to homeschooling and was wondering if anyone here is/was homeschooling. If so, what flavor of homeschooler are you?

Autonomous, at the moment! Basically, we do what my daughter tells me! I'm hoping that as she accuмulates more knowledge, she'll appreciate a more structured approach.

So you'd be the "unschooling" sort.  

I'm reading from a Charlotte Mason-inspired mom's book right now, "Real Learning." I like many of the ideas, but her application of them doesn't always appeal to me -- some of it seems too right-brained for my left-brained self.

We use most of the Seton material.

We use Seton as well. It seems more professional and better organized than many traditionalist homeschool programs.

we are homeschoolers...
I don't think we have a flavor of our own. I think every program or method has its advantages and disadvantages. So I like to borrow from them all.  I like to research what is required for the prescribed grade level, and use that as a basis.
I don't like buying a planned curriculum like seton, there is always so much material to cover, it dosen't leave any room for exploring what your student wants to learn, but i think every student needs the structure and planned seatwork that you get with a curriculum based program.
I like the unschoolers idea that everything in life is an opportunity for learning, and that you should explore and answer all of your kids questions. I definetely try to keep this a daily part of our life.
I like charlotte masons idea of always reading live books with your kids and having them read aloud and having active discussions.
I'm by no means a homeschooler with all the answers, but I'm always looking for new ideas, trying to be a better teacher. I don't think there is any one perfect method, maybe the spaghetti method "keeping throwing thoughts and ideas at your kids and hope something sticks!"

I haven't done any research, but I have been doing a lot of thinking on homeschooling.

It almost seems that the very idea of establishing a "curriculum," or a, "class" or "session" seems to make one shudder almost immediately. Labeling an education, separating it from regular life, makes it seem very undesirable.

Why put a label on it at all? Why not actually mingle it into daily life?
Perhaps one scenario could be this. You need to teach your child multiplication. Perhaps you could say that in order to play with this ball, you must first play a game with me. If you can count all of these apples before I count my apples, you can play ball. While the child's counting them individually, I could set mine up in groups of 4 or such, and multiply to get the answer quickly. The child will be dumbfounded, and ask how I did it. I will then show him how, by explaining multiplication to him, and possibly division. Then I would let him try it for a while. Then we'd play again, and I'd let him win

There! no mention of schooling, or classrooms, or education! He didn't even know i was teaching him anything, just showing him a trick.
I'm not sure if this will work very well on the more abstract stuff, like rhetoric in literature, but I think it would be a start. I just think that if you are going to teach something, practicality, like using mulitplication to find out how many real apples you have, is important. It makes it seem less schooling and more practical.
True, you need to have a bit of flair for excitement and the dramatic to keep it interesting, but I guess you could work on it. These are just my ideas.

The problem I experienced in school (which would apply to following a set cirriculum) was not being able to fully persue things I was interested in.

Part of the idea behind the book I'm reading is that when your child expresses an interest in something, you give them the tools then and there to explore that subject, even if it means they fall slightly behind in something else.

Even if a child falls seriously behind in something by formal schooling standards, you ask yourself how much you'll require of them to establish proficiency and thereby free up their time to follow their interests. These "interests" usually take the form of things not stressed in formal cirriculums such as music, art, theater or even athletics.

For me, this was always math. Even in college, I slept through Calculus class (it was at 8 am afterall  ), still had As on every assignment, and yet the teacher wasn't interested in giving me anything more than what was required. (Of course, one could argue that at 18 I should have been a little more self-motivated, but I think I'll blame that on my public school teachers as well.  )

I'm sure that didn't come across very coherently as I've been interrupted 3 or 4 times... another thing that book says is that you shouldn't ignore your children when they come to talk to you!  :faint:

Curricula can be important as well when it comes to the regulations in certain states; some states will harrass you if you don't have a formal curriculum but will leave you alone if you're in one of the approved programs.

In Ohio we have to report officially to the superintendent, submit our curriculum, and quite a bit of other paperwork.  If the homeschooling parent has a Bachelor's degree (or higher) -- which we both do -- we can start our own school and use our own curriculum.  Even with that, they would give us the third degree if we used our own.  So we just took the easy way out--lest CPS come knocking on our door--and went with an approved curriculum (Seton) and independent scoring of their exams.