Footprints On Our Land supplies unique, literature-based unit study homeschool curriculums
25/06/2026
Here are some things parents have told us after switching to the Footprints curriculums. We are grateful for every message from every family that chooses Footprints! Thank you for all your support over the years 🇿🇦
🌷 Both Good Days and Hard Days Count ❤️
As we homeschool, there are beautiful days filled with wonder, discovery, and memory-making adventures.
There are also days when it feels as though all we’ve done is navigate difficult relationships, settle sibling squabbles, or encourage a child through work completed with a less-than-enthusiastic attitude.
🤔 So which days count as learning?
The truth is, both do. When our children have hard days and we respond with patience, self-control and grace, we are modelling the very maturity we hope they will develop for themselves.
When a child resists a lesson and we explain that we, too, have responsibilities we don’t always enjoy but fulfil because they are important, we are teaching perseverance, diligence and character.
When we take the time to guide our children through conflict, apologise when necessary, and help them work towards reconciliation, we are teaching life skills that will serve them far beyond their school years…in friendships, marriages, workplaces, and communities.
🗺️ The adventure days matter.
😢 The difficult days matter too.
💡 Both are learning days.
✅ Both have value.
🥰 And both are helping to prepare your children for adulthood.
22/06/2026
🏠 Home education is SO much more than academics 🤓
19/06/2026
🌍 “Geography is, to my mind, a subject of high educational value. Its peculiar value lies in its fitness to nourish the mind with ideas, and to furnish the imagination with pictures. The child’s geography lesson should furnish just the sort of information which grown-up people care to possess.” - Charlotte Mason
18/06/2026
🇿🇦 South African Stories Matter 📚 | Our Footprints & Voetspore programmes (available for children from ages 4–16) offer the perfect blend of great literature, real-life learning, hands-on experiences with a proudly South African flavour.
Whether you use one programme or journey through them all, your children will develop a deeper connection to the land they call home, its people, wildlife, history, geography and rich cultural heritage.
💭 Too often, children learn about distant places while knowing very little about the world right outside their own front door.
👣 Footprints helps bridge that gap through carefully chosen books, living experiences and stories that bring South Africa to life. Designed specifically for busy homeschooling families, our programmes are simple to use and open-and-go.
✅ You don’t need to be a teacher, historian, scientist, or curriculum planner. We’ve done the preparation for you, so you can spend less time planning and more time learning, reading, exploring, and growing alongside your children.
Why would homeschooling in winter be any different to homeschooling in summer? There is no right or wrong way! Ultimately YOU must find the rhythm and routine that works for you and each of your children. Today Shirley shares her thoughts on how to make the seasonal switch easier 🌞❄️
16/06/2026
🥱 Boredom is not something to rescue your child from!
🌧️ As South Africans settle into winter, with shorter days and rainy weather, the temptation can be to reach for a screen at the first cry of, “I’m bored!”
But what if boredom isn’t the problem we think it is?
🪴 When children aren’t constantly entertained, they begin to imagine, create, build, explore, invent, and solve problems for themselves.
Boredom gives the mind space to wander and creativity room to grow.
A bored child may become a resourceful, creative, and self-motivated adult. A constantly entertained child may never have the opportunity to develop those same skills.
💛 So the next time me you hear, “I’m bored,” perhaps don’t rush to solve the problem. Perhaps boredom is not something we need to rescue our children from.
15/06/2026
✅ The goal of education is not merely to fill a child’s mind, but to form a whole person
🖥️ A screen can deliver information. It can explain a maths concept, teach a grammar rule, or show a video about ancient Egypt.
But education is about far more than information.
📚 A great story invites a child to walk alongside courageous heroes, wrestle with difficult choices, encounter noble ideas, and see the consequences of character, both good and bad. Children do not become wise because they have consumed more content.
They become wise through relationships, experiences, conversations, responsibilities, and the rich ideas found in great books.
This is why literature-based homeschooling has stood the test of me. It recognises that education is not simply the transfer of information.
❤️ It is the formation on of a person ❤️
Long after children have forgotten many of the facts they memorised, they will remember the stories that inspired them, the values they embraced, and the habits they developed.
12/06/2026
📚 “Textbooks are a core part of the [school] curriculum, as crucial to the teacher as a blueprint is to a carpenter, so one might assume they are conceived, researched, written, and published as unique contributions to advancing knowledge.
In fact, most of these books fall far short of their important role in the educational scheme of things. They are processed into existence using the pulp of what already exists, rising like swamp things from the compost of the past.
The mulch is turned and tended by many layers of editors who scrub it of anything possibly objectionable before it is fed into a government-run “adoption” system that provides mediocre material to students of all ages.” - Charlie, an ex-textbook publisher
11/06/2026
🤫 A Footprints secret to multi-level learning ⬇️
One read aloud can teach the whole family! As we cast our minds over the 25yr journey of homeschooling our combined 10 children we realise how true this statement is.
As we have read hundreds of books to our children we have had our minds changed, our thought life enlarged, ideas sparked and our characters shaped.
From the youngest to the oldest child in the home each will take away some nugget to turn around in their mind.
Charlotte Mason advised giving our children’s minds a steady diet of good ideas and the best place to find this is in literature. And Footprints and Voetspore programmes contain some of the best.
💬 What’s been your favourite Footprints book so far this year? Let us know in the comments!