Bridge the Gap math might be useful depending on what level he's actually at. Does he actually have study skills? I imagine failing science is more about not having executive function and study skills than prior gaps. I think it was lewelma who had a thread on explicitly teaching executive function skills that might be helpful.

Yes. I've been leaving mine on his own after the first chapter in Pre-algebra. But I am pretty sure I'll need to do every other book with him. Maybe not at the same time, and maybe not all the questions, but I'll need to be familiar with what he's working on so that if he gets stuck I can jump in and help without a ton of catch-up time.

We're using AoPS at this point. I'm not sure what topics you're seeing that cause the hesitation, I haven't really been following the board lately. What are your concerns about it?

They're so young. You could switch if you wanted, or if you feel like placement would be a better fit in a couple more months, switch then.

Have you looked at Rightstart? Kinesthetic, scripted for the teacher...

It's all very well to do Algebra now. Will his brain be ready for calculus when it gets there early? Sometimes there are things in math that seem to require developmental leaps. I'm hesitant to accelerate math unless it's really clearly needed.

Rightstart is rigorous, in a sense. It's not particularly long? I guess that depends on what "long" is. And your child. I have had four-hour days, but that's because my child was willing to stare at the ceiling for that long before doing the ten minutes of work required. I don't think we can blame the curriculum for that one! LOL Parent intensive? Yes. Because teaching math is teaching math. Unless you get a program that doesn't involve the parent, but I recommend strongly against that, especially for a parent who feels uncertain in math. I think it's going to be very difficult to find an academically solid program that doesn't involve making the kids feel challenged. Math is going to require some sitting there and figuring it out. If it doesn't, then they're not building that skill either, and won't have it when they need it.

Audiobooks. I'd throw on really great audiobooks while he's doing other pastimes. Also, does he see you reading? Is that something that's typical in the family generally?

Grammar for the Well-Trained Mind should work well for it. How long do you have? Writing with Skill might not move as fast as you need, depending on the time you have.

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Check your local laws. Some places won't give any credit for homeschooling high school, and require a student to start at grade 9 regardless of age. His plan of going to a school at age 16 won't really work well with that. So you'll need to know the policies in place. Agreed, if his math and writing are good, he'll do okay. I would do a placement test for what you're looking at for math. If he's not at the level you'd hope, I'd go for Bridge the Gap math to get him up to the level he'll want for the curriculum you'll want right now. For writing, there are a bunch of approaches you could take, depending on how he's doing right now. Does he have general background in science? History? You could do a sort of survey course for those, if you liked.

It would be interesting. I don't think it's "the" key, but it could certainly be fun. Will it line up with your local state standards for socials? I would guess not. So you'd basically be asking the school district to add a completely new course, on top of what they're already trying to juggle. Is it worthwhile? Sure. Will it be easy? Probably not.

I wouldn't use Singapore math on grade level unless she tests into that level. That just sets her up for failure, especially since it's considered a challenging math program. Put her where she is, and have her progress as she can. I'm not familiar with Shiller, sorry. While there might be reading/writing diagnostics that you can use, it'll be more useful to have her read to you. I think you can find "guided reading level assessments" online. If she does struggle with that, she may need some focused phonics instruction. And it both reading and math are a struggle, put writing as an easier subject. Would Writing with Ease and First Language Lessons fit what you need?

What about Rightstart?

Have you run across the concept of deschooling? I would be inclined to put away all schoolwork for now. Give him time and space to recover from the last two awful years. Take at least until Christmas, possibly longer.

I might actually just leave phonics by the wayside for a while. Let her read. I would expect her to intuit the phonics over time.

The errata for all Well Trained Mind Press books are here: https://welltrainedmind.com/corrections/?v=3e8d115eb4b3 Is that what you're looking for? Otherwise, clarification on what?

FLL is just grammar, yes (plus some poetry memorization.) You could start him at level 3, but do have him memorize the definitions of the parts of speech as he comes to them (some of that would have typically been done in the first two levels.) WWE has final assessments available on the website, I think, so you could use those to place where he should fit. Level one is primarily copywork and narration. I would probably not start a fourth grade student there unless they were very seriously behind. Level 2 would probably be a good fit but, of course, you can check the assessments. Level 3 uses dictation, and works on clear summaries of passages. It would probably be a challenge for him.

Part of the issue, yes: that of language fluency. Not the issue of it being culturally not accepted to have hearing people teaching ASL, though. It would definitely be good to have actual conversational practice in the Deaf community.

My concern would be that I don't think the teacher is Deaf.

I feel like your husband is borrowing trouble and, simultaneously, setting you up for failure. By talking about boys as being DIFFERENT somehow, and difficult for women to handle... Every kid goes through separation from parents. And every kid had a personality. Are boys generally different than girls? Yeah, probably. Though there are surely exceptions, too. But women, like men, are quite capable of learning to deal appropriately with the tween or teen in front of them. I'm underwhelmed by your husband's assumption that it'll be a problem because you're a woman. Yuck. He thinks you won't be able to handle it...because you're a woman. I mean, I can fairly guarantee that a middle school boy won't want to be treated like mummy's darling boy, aged four. But that was a given. Treat your child as a competent human, teach him to be a competent human, and insist that he treat others as competent humans. That will look different for each child and each age and stage, regardless of biological sex of the child.

Okay. So I've never tried to independently teach formal grammar without a curriculum telling me how to my kids. It's possible, certainly. In terms of copywork and narration, I'll tell you a bit about how Writing With Ease is structured, and how we did narration for history. WWE level one has four days per week. Days 1 and 3 are copywork (one sentence each, or maybe two very short sentences.) Days 2 and 4 are narration, which means the child listens to a selected passage, orally answers some questions about it, and then tells you one thing they remember about the passage. Partway through the book, on day 4 they start copying out the sentence they told you that you wrote down for them. I don't remember exactly the progression for levels 2 and 3, but they include copywork, moving toward dictation (where you read the sentence out loud and the student writes it out.) The narration section moves toward them telling you a summary of the passage rather than just one item. For history, we used SOTW. Again, we used the activity guide which had oral comprehension questions, and then I had them do a summary of the passage we'd read. At age 8, I was still scribing the narration for them as they told me what to write, so it wasn't writing-intensive for them. If your age 8 loves writing and does so fluently, they can certainly write it themselves. There were days where I got pushback about that, but I'm pretty sure I would have gotten pushback about anything I required of them. Regardless of how fun and entertaining, as soon as it's "required" then there can be complaint about it!

Are you planning to use curriculum that lays it out for you, or pull your own material and do it free-form? If you're using curriculum, have you decided on what?

Welcome! Homeschooling is an awesome adventure. I'm wondering how much time you envision this taking up of their day. Is that, perhaps, where your concern is coming from? Your age 5 will be in grade 1? So that would be one sentence of copywork, two times a week. Your age 8 will likely be writing 3 sentences a day. I'm sure they can handle the boredom for the 10 minutes it takes. Deschooling is super important. Have you read about that yet? Do. Deschool, for at least a couple of months after school starts. Then, a couple of months later, when you introduce doing 10 minutes of handwriting, you might find you don't get much pushback. Have you selected curriculum you want to use? First Language Lessons does detailed grammar study, but it does it gently. It's not rigid and boring.

If he's brute-forcing his way through 30-10, I'd find that concerning. Definitely needs a ton of work on the 3-tens - 1-ten concept, to be able to do it easily. Rightstart doesn't use a number line at all (well, it sort of does for teaching rounding, later on) and instead really focuses on being able to see numbers, especially on the abacus. I think RS B could be a good fit for him.