We use Spell to Write and Read, which is a multi-sensory explicit phonics program. Here is a blog post from a friend of mine who used this program to remediate her then 14yo's reading and spelling. He is now an English major in college.

We have had some problems with dd8 that I attribute to hormones--situational anxiety, forgetting things in school that she had already mastered. I have talked to her about how hormones affect us, and that knowledge seems to help her, at least after-the-fact.

I have looked at this before, but I could never find out subscription information. Do you just have to purchase each magazine separately?

My dd9 just loves to be read to and always has. To her, being read to is the equivalent of being loved. I wake her up by reading to her in the morning. When she is sad, I read to her, and it immediately cheers her up. My ds6, OTOH, usually prefers to read on his own, so I don't read to him as much. I do think, though, that it is very important to hear books that are above the child's reading level, so I often have him sit in when I read to his sister.

You can switch to phonics-based spelling. A student's ability to read is not necessarily an indicator that that ability will translate to spelling.

Here are some thoughts that I have after using Spell to Write and Read for 4 years. 1. Stop using the names of the letters. In SWR, we learn the sounds of the letters first so that the mind is not cluttered with the names of the letters. Even if you don't use the program, if you get some phonogram cards from SWR, Spalding, or Logic of English, you will have a very good tool for this. 2. Before a student can sound out a written word, he needs to be able to sound out an oral word. One game I got from SWR was very helpful for my ds in this respect. Gather a basket of items whose names have 2-3 sounds (pen, dog, knife, cheese, chair, book, etc.). You are going to say the sounds of the word separately, and the child is supposed to figure out which item it is. So for example, you say to the child, "Find the /p/ - /e/ - /n/," and he blends the sounds into the word "pen" and picks out the pen from the basket. When he gets good at this, you can switch roles and have him separate the sounds as he asks you to pick out an object. And you can add challenge by adding words with 4 or more sounds. Consider using one of these spelling-first, explicit phonics programs. They systematically train the child to sound out words and show him how all of the spelling rules work.

Frog and Toad Magic Treehouse

I wouldn't stop spelling until Sep. That is a long time. You could focus on specific things that your student is weak in. Right now, we are working on homonyms, for example. You could focus on writing phonograms from memory or particular spelling rules that he is struggling with. I would not redo lessons. I would just give some short quizzes and talk about the mistakes that they make. Grammar really isn't that necessary in 1st grade, so I would stop FLL unless everyone just loves it. I am not in a state where we have to count hours. But I do use Homeschool Tracker, which has an option to track hours. For me, that would be the easiest way to do it. I would break down the hours by weeks, and then whenever it we were short, I would add in those things that are educational that just happen during the day--read-alouds, life skills (cooking, cleaning), physical education, music, dramatizations (pretend play), art, etc.

You could try the book Games for Math by Peggy Kaye. It contains games for each concept that children, K-3, tend to have difficulty with.

I sense that there is something in this idea that would be useful to me. But the descriptions I am getting are just too vague for me to find it. I still don't even know what it is that you are doing with it, how you are running it, how you started it, etc. I would love to know more, but I feel like I am having to nag for information.

I guess I am still having trouble wrapping my brain around it. Co-op = volunteers, Study Center = employees? In what way is a study center more organized? And if you only have a few people doing a book study, how is there more money changing hands?

I wouldn't be inclined to give money. But I would donate books.

I am really interested in this thread, though I am still not entirely sure how a study center is different than a co-op. My other question is how did you find the people interested in reading the Iliad. Who (and how many) did you propose it to? Right now, we have a small group of friends who have not found what they want in the co-ops. Our kids are pretty young still, so I think we are pretty happy with a play group. But as they get older, we may want/need groups for our academics.

MCP Phonics--for a child that was already reading well ahead of grade level. Really stupid.

I think you have to remember that SWB chose passages largely based on her experience with her own children. (There is nothing wrong with that. It is just that her experience may be very different from yours.) She makes it clear in the workbooks that some of the passages are designed to stretch a child. But you, as the parent and teacher of your students, know if those passages are too much of a stretch for them. It is important to challenge a child, but only in a way that is inspiring and encouraging. You really can and should trust yourself over SWB on this. I love SWB, but she doesn't know my kids as well as I do.

If you are looking for phonics for spelling, then I would not go with ETC, as that is phonics for reading. AAS and LOE are both fine phonics-based spelling programs, but also very expensive. Spalding and Spell to Write and Read are similar programs that are much more economical. We use SWR. Many people are willing to spend the money on AAS and LOE, because they are more scripted, and there is more hand-holding for the teacher. Spalding and SWR both have a significant learning curve, but I found that once I got a few months into it, it became as open-and-go as anything else.

When my oldest was about 4yo, I started doing literature-based geography with her. She would pick a country, and I would find books about that country and find it on the map. I have kept a list of the living books that we have read by continent and country here. After we went through several countries, we started to play oral trivia games to help her remember the countries. This method worked so well that now I don't even need to do anything formal with my 5yo. He has grown up surrounded with geography, and he now knows more geography than I ever did before I started studying it with my kids.

My dh is a physics teacher and he uses Hewitt's for his remedial students who cannot handle the math required in a standard high school physics program. It is perfect for middle school. It is exactly what the title says, teaching the concepts without the math.

When I have used BFSU, it only takes me about 30 minutes of reading the lesson to plan the discussion. I took a lot of science in high school, and my dh is a physics teacher, so I am accustomed to "talking science." I just highlight the questions, the key points that I want to make, and the common misconceptions kids have. But I don't think that reading it over the summer would be sufficient preparation for me. I really need to do that weekly. What I have trouble with, personally, is gathering the stuff I need for activities. Usually it is stuff I have on hand, but I don't always know where it is. And sometimes I don't have it, and I have to either come up with a substitute, go out to buy it, or find an alternative activity (which doesn't always go well). Those are the kinds of things that get me completely derailed and make me stop teaching entirely. But these are things that I could plan over the summer. If teaching BFSU were important to me, I might even spend the summer putting things I need in ziplocs for each lesson.

I really like The Civil Rights Movement for Kids. It is just right for my almost 9yo. She loves the ideas for the activities. We have read a multitude of picture books, all of which have been great. But this could be used as a spine.

It seems to me that if a child is advanced, that is a reason not to test. Because their output generally doesn't match their input, it is going to be hard to get an accurate measure. I would wait until the child the asynchronicity evens out.

For me, it would matter whether the student could do what we were doing in our homeschool. (I couldn't tell from your OP whether you have children that you are also homeschooling.) But I already have two children with vastly different academic needs. Another child would either need to be combined with my teacher-intensive child, or would have to be able to be relatively independent.

When I was starting with my oldest, I did literature-based geography. She picked a country on the map, and I found books for that country. You could add crafts and cooking to that, too. Here is a link to my book list if you are interested. (I have continued to add to it, even though we are not doing it anymore.)

People who read and spell well without phonics (like myself) do so because they can intuit the phonics. It is not because some other form of instruction is better for them. Students who struggle to read and spell need the phonics taught explicitly because they don't get it on their own.

Here is an example of how this would work in SWR.