Personalised Home Education – Grades 4-6

Take charge of your children’s learning and pick and mix a selection of personalised home education curricula, to give them a fabulous, fun and effective education, while meeting and exceeding the “minimum requirements” for academic success!

Personalised Homeschooling – Grades 1-3
High School Options for Grades 10-12

Many homeschooling families start out using school-at-home or online school programmes because these options seem to offer them the security that they need as new home educators. Usually within the first two years, they discover that keeping up with the demands and schedule of a curriculum “slave master” robs their family of the JOY of homeschooling and suffocates the LOVE of LEARNING.

Experienced homeschoolers always recommend taking charge yourself and following an eclectic approach, where you select a variety of home education resources for each subject, that allows you to cater to each of your children’s abilities and interests, while at the same time, covering the important basic skills that we all want our children to acquire. You are the master and the curricula are your tools! Then you progress through each of the selected programmes at your family’s own pace, enjoying the freedom to explore more deeply anything that captivates the children’s attention or that they need more time to master.

This approach is often referred to as eclectic homeschooling. It’s the best way to give your family personalised home education!

How do you pick homeschool curricula to create a personalised home education experience? 

For children in the Intermediate Phase (that’s a government/school term for Grades 4-6), we have listed our top picks in the table below. These should help you get off to a confident start on your homeschooling adventure. Footprints does not supply all the products on our recommended list, but the suppliers are given.

Please note that we don’t work on strict grade levels as we know that children might fall into multiple age brackets within a family and using the same social studies and science curriculum for all of them, if they are close enough in age, makes things simpler for everyone. Parents often adapt the recommended assignments to suit children that are just above or below the given target age level. For Languages and Maths, each child needs to work at the appropriate level for their age and abilities.

For children roughly between ages 8-14 years, we recommend the following selection of materials. This combination of curricula will provide you with three years of delightful homeschooling adventures.

Homeschool Curricula for the Intermediate Phase, Grades 4-7 or Ages 8-14

Subject	Products	Comments	Time (4 days per week)
1. Social Studies	Footprints – The Early Years (12-18 months to complete) Followed by Footprints – The Last Century (12-18 months to complete)	Buy Footprints – The Early Years first, then the sequel, Footprints the Last Century. These holistic unit studies also include Poetry, Art Appreciation, Music Appreciation, Bible, Copywork (for handwriting) and a variety of short projects, Arts and Crafts and Writing Assignments.	Minimum one hour per day. More if you prefer. Spend 30-40 minutes reading aloud, then 30-40 minutes on assignments and activities.
2. Home Language (English)	Footprints – The Early Years  Plus Footprints Language Arts Beginners or Advanced Followed by Footprints – The Last Century	The programmes include dictation, copywork, poetry, writing assignments, discussion, debate and oral narration.	20-30 minutes (may be included in the above some days)
3. Science	Footprints Nature Quest (two years to complete)	This story-driven study of SA’s 9 biomes includes mapwork, writing assignments, research, observation, drawing from nature and other practical activities that will enrich your children’s learning and experiences.	About one hour, three days per week
4. Maths	Math-U-See (or any other option you prefer. See other popular homeschool Maths programmes)	Math-U-See is now available from Good Neighbours online store). Use the printable placement tests to determine each child’s starting level. Search for the exact title on Good Neighbours.	30 minutes per day
5. Afrikaans (Additional Language)	Leer Afrikaans Lag-Lag series and Lekker Afrikaans series.	Available from SA Homeschool Suppliers. Use one then the other at the same grade level, then move up to the next grade.	(20-30 minutes, one or two workbook pages per day, three days per week)
6. Life Skills/ Technology	Touch Typing	BBC Dance mat Typing (free) or any other online typing trainer	10-15 minutes per day
TOTAL			Roughly 3 hours per day (maximum) to allow plenty of informal learning and productive free time.

We believe that the above list is ample to give your children an excellent education. If you have time and energy in any given season for any other subjects or skills (third/foreign languages, art, electronics, coding, etc.) you could add them, but if not, your children can pursue those specific interests at a later stage in their educational journeys.

If you have two (or more) children that are in the same age bracket (8-14 years) you can select  Footprints – The Early Years for them to use simultaneously. This makes managing the various programmes easier and keeps the family more together. Similarly, you can also use Footprints Nature Quest for Science with children in the same age category. 

Our Footprints products are also non-consumable, so you can re-use the same programme with younger children, when they reach the target age level – so they are a good investment!
Here is a sample chapter for you to view: Footprints Sample

The Language Arts programme that goes along with Footprints – The Early Years (an optional extra, which we strongly recommend) offers a Beginner Level (roughly for Grades 1-3 if the children can already read) and an Advanced Level (roughly Grades 4-7). Now, all you need to add is Maths and Afrikaans!

We chose to do the Footprints curriculum over two years….really allowing the things to take root and focus on deeper learning. It has been absolutely amazing and watching my son grow, deepen in knowledge and wisdom. It has absolutely blown my mind. My dad who was the biggest critic (he is a retired principal) was absolutely blown away and won over somewhat. In fact most of the older members in my family hail from the educational sector and they are amazed at the growth.
~ Annuska [surname withheld]

What About Homeschool Assessments?

At Footprints, we do not offer testing and exams like online schools, as we believe that home education should NOT be school-at-home. It works best when you give your children a customised education and progress at each child’s own pace. As they complete the curriculum at one grade level, you can move them up to the next level – at any time of the year. Children often progress very quickly in the early grades!

As a parent you SEE your child’s work, attitude and interest-levels every day, so you already know a lot more about what’s going on than a parent with a child at school. This means that a test is unlikely to tell you anything that you don’t already know about your child’s progress in a particular subject or skill. View our more in depth discussion about Homeschool Tests and Assessments (12 minutes) or read the articles that follow below it.

You can rest assured, if your children ever need to return to school, (unless they have learning challenges) they won’t be ‘behind’ their school-going peers! Like our own children and many others, who are now university graduates, if your students intend studying further, they will be well-equipped!

Here is a three-part series of articles that explains how parents can perform personalised home education assessments and even create reports, if that’s necessary. 

Please read the more detailed descriptions of each of our products on the links provided above. If you have questions and need more information, please don’t hesitate to contact us.