When your kids go to school, the spelling list shows up on Monday in a folder. When you homeschool, nobody sends one. You're the person who decides which fifteen words are worth a week of practice, and most curriculum guides hand you either a fat workbook or nothing at all.
You don't need a boxed spelling program to do this well. You need a place to get words, a sensible number of them, and the same short rhythm every week.
Where the words come from. Four sources cover almost everything. The best one is your child's own writing: the words they misspell in a journal entry or a letter to grandma are the words they actually use and actually get wrong. The second is a spelling pattern, one per week, such as silent e (cake, bike, hope), the -ck ending, or vowel teams like ai and ay. Grouping words that share a pattern teaches the rule, and the rule carries over to words you never put on a list. Third, pull a few words from whatever you're studying. A week on weather can give you cloud, thunder, and degree. Last, the high-frequency lists (Dolch and Fry are the two everyone uses) are full of words like because, friend, and said that kids meet constantly and that refuse to follow the rules.
A good weekly list mixes them. Something like eight pattern words, two or three from their own writing, one or two from your current unit, and two review words they missed last week.
How many words. Fewer than you think. Five to eight is plenty in kindergarten and first grade. Ten to fifteen works for most kids in second through fourth. Older kids can handle fifteen to twenty, but if your child is scoring under about 70 percent every Friday, the list is too long or too hard, and cutting it does more than pushing harder.
Try a pretest on Monday. Schools rarely do this, but it suits homeschooling well. Read the whole list aloud on Monday and have your child spell every word cold. Anything they get right comes off the list, and you replace it or just let the week be shorter. It stops a strong speller from spending five days on words they already know, and it shows you on day one which pattern is the one that needs work.
The rest of the week. Tuesday through Thursday, practice a little each day in a different way each time: say the letters out loud, build the word from letter tiles, find the misspelled version in a group, write it from memory. Writing a word ten times in a row is the method most of us grew up with, and it's the least useful, because by the fourth copy nobody is recalling anything. Friday is a real test. Read each word, use it in a sentence, and have your child write it on paper without looking. Words they miss roll into next week as review words, two or three at most, so the list never snowballs.
Keep a simple record. A notebook page per week with the list, the Friday score and the missed words is enough to show progress, and it comes in handy if your state's homeschool rules or your scholarship program ever asks what you covered.
If you'd rather not run the flashcards yourself, Spelling Stream takes your list in whatever form you have it. Type the words, say them aloud, or take a photo of the page you wrote them on. It turns them into short games and a practice test, read in your own recorded voice. Its Written Test mode reads each word aloud and repeats it while your child writes on paper, so Friday can happen without you reading the list. Focus Words keeps bringing back the words your child misses, which takes care of the review words for you. The free version holds one list with ten words visible in practice, enough to try a full week. Pro gives you room for a school year of lists.
Using an education savings account or another scholarship to pay for homeschool supplies? Several programs can pay for Spelling Stream Pro directly. The scholarship and ESA page shows how it works in your state.