I think what my son and I do is closer to unschooling than anything else, except for math, piano and handwriting.
My son always liked general knowledge trivia so I just bought books about whatever he was interested in at the time. Instead of using a reading textbook I let him read from the science encyclopedia that he liked so much at age 5 and 6. I let him play free online educational games a lot. He only used a spelling textbook for one year to learn basic spelling rules and I saw that he was pretty good at remembering the way a word was spelled, if he had seen the word a few times. I printed out the Sitton high frequency word list and asked him to spell words on it and had him write any words he missed. By the time he competed in a state spelling bee, he was good at noticing and remembering how difficult or unusual words were spelled. He was interested enough in words that he looked up words that he wasn't familiar with because using context clues wasn't good enough for him. He wanted to know the exact meaning and etymology so I let him take the time to do that. When we read together we often had the laptop with us so we could look up more info about words or history on dictionary sites and Wikipedia. He loved to discuss things. Reading anything with him was slow going sometimes, especially if it was something he was really interested in and he often had two or three books going at the same time. This was one of the reasons the library wouldn't work for us--we would have to pay library fines on top of having to pay $40 a year and the gas to get there to use the library in the city. Also, I like to write the comments, jokes and comical analogies that my son makes when we read. On the pages of the books, I underline the paragraph or phrase or whatever prompted his comments and write down what he says so I can remember the fun we had when he is grown. I think he might also enjoy looking at the books and reading the comments when he is older.
Because he liked history so much, the only fiction he would read for a while was historical fiction and he really liked books like Johnny Tremain when he was second and third grade age. At almost 11, he knows a lot more history than I do and can relate it to things that are happening now. But it isn't just history that he likes, its economics, law, philosophy, psychology, sociology, biology, all kinds of different subjects that a lot of teachers might not think are important for an almost 11 year old to know and would not be on their tests.
I think the way we are homeschooling has helped him develop a very good general knowledge. I finally played Buzz The Mega Quiz on his PS2 with him and he was answering questions faster than I could. If he didn't know the answer he could make an educated guess. He's very good at making educated guesses because he has read a lot and watched a lot of educational television and played educational computer and video games. He is fun to talk to because he can talk about just about anything and this adds to his self confidence. I really enjoy learning with him because he thinks of things I would never think of and asks questions that I would have never thought to ask. I refused to try to stifle his curiosity like my sister-in-law suggested before he started kindergarten and I refused to make him color in the lines and I think it is working well for us.
I have The Well Trained Mind somewhere. I read a few pages of it and I didn't think it would work for us at the time. I bought it when my son was six or seven and I don't remember much about it.
