Decompression
Well, when the new semester started up The Boy and I started off with a schedule where we sat down and did workbook pages every day, twice a day for about 20 min at a time. This did not bear any fruit, and in fact resulted in a couple of somewhat frustrating days.
Solution: take a break, just cool off and learn other stuff less formally for a while. Outcome: The Boy has suddenly decided that maybe reading is a good idea, and has taken off on a tear of sounding out letters to make words. I think we may be getting somewhere.