Barefoot Days (Kaalvoetpret in Afrikaans) is a popular Charlotte-Mason style home education programme for ages 4-8. It is a story-based learning programme offering monthly themes suited for young children, such as:
- My body and my identity
- My family
- My community
- Animals etc.
There are five stories to enjoy for each theme plus activities to develop the following:
- Art Appreciation
- Music Appreciation
- Nature Study
- Poetry
- Habits and Character Training
- Physical Activities to get bodies moving and develop gross and fine motor skills
- Hands-on arts, crafts, experiments and other age-appropriate activities
Most importantly, each volume contains tips, encouragement and inspiration for parents as we know how daunting the task of teaching and training young children can be to a mother, alone at home, who often feels inexperienced and unsure. Download a sample of the parent guide here or watch the two-minute video that shows you all the beautiful resources and tools that Barefoot Days offers you:
A Magnificent “Mommy Manual”
We are home educators and we listen to what new home educating moms need. When we told our Footprints families about Barefoot Days / Kaalvoetpret, they confirmed that they don’t want just a book of activities. They want a genuine “mommy manual” that teaches THEM how to teach their kids. This is what makes Barefoot Days and Kaalvoetpret different from every other curriculum on the market. We have included our years of homeschooling wisdom and experience in weekly nuggets and bite-sized bits within the pages of the parent guide.
It’s a programme that focuses on the whole child and the whole family scenario in the home educating household. It’s not just about academics. It includes developing character, routines, habits, nature study, emotional intelligence, art, music, sibling relationships, parenting and learning about the world and people together as a family.
Everything you need, when you need it!
And it takes the hassle out of homeschooling the Charlotte Mason way by providing the resources you need for art appreciation, music appreciation, nature study, poetry, language, history, geography at your fingertips. It’s all there for you to dip into whenever it suits you. Art prints, links to music to listen to plus a course website with links to useful online resources, so that you don’t have to spend hours finding them yourself!
As an added bonus, Barefoot Days meets and exceeds the recommended topics set out in the CAPS document for Lifeskills in the foundation phase. Read more here: Barefoot Days/Kaalvoetpret and CAPS
As we set out to write this programme, our goal was to equip new homeschooling parents for the long-term journey of raising their children and educating them at home according to Biblical and Charlotte Mason principles. This is the programme we WISH we’d had when we started home educating our little ones!
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All the story books for each volume are included in the package.
“The rewards of early reading are astonishingly meaningful: toddlers who have lots of stories read to them turn into children who are more likely to enjoy strong relationships, sharper focus, and greater emotional resilience and self-mastery. The evidence has become so overwhelming that social scientists now consider read-aloud time one of the most important indicators of a child’s prospects in life.”
~ Meghan Cox Gurdon
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Barefoot Days Volume 1: Themes 1-3R3 100.00
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Barefoot Days Volume 2: Themes 4-6R3 400.00
Volume 3 is expected by mid-2024
There are nine units in Barefoot Days. We have seen with our own ten children, and it is confirmed through early childhood specialists, that children learn in an ever-widening circumference as they grow.
This is the structure of the programme.
A Natural Progression
Volume 1
Theme 1 – My Body and My Iidentity
Theme 2 – My Family
Theme 3 – My Community
Volume 2
Theme 4 – City and Countryside
Theme 5 – (Land) Animals
Theme 6 – Sea and Sky
Volume 3
Theme 7 – My Country
Theme 8 – My Continent, Africa
Theme 9 -The World
Read this article to see details including a table indicating how Barefoot Days meets (and exceeds) the recommendations of the Curriculum Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS): Barefoot Days/Kaalvoetpret and CAPS.
In each unit the parent guide provides activities to go along with the selection of carefully chosen story books. These activities are designed to draw out themes from the stories and provide you with fun ideas and things to do with your young children. There are four stories plus a story about nature, making a total of five delightful books to enjoy together in each theme.
The focus, however, is not on these projects – even though they are lots of fun. The focus is on instilling a love for learning in your children and showing you as a new home educating parent, just how gently and easy it is to guide your children towards knowledge.
What you will not find is worksheets, workbooks and things that keep your young child desk-bound. There are many years ahead of them where they will need desk time disciplines like reading, writing and maths. But for these early years you simply want to create an environment of ideas and a rich thought life. This will be the strong foundation on which they will build the rest of their education.
“A child is a person in whom all possibilities are present – present now at this very moment – not to be educed after many years and efforts manifold on the part of the educator.”
“Ideas are held in that thought-environment which surrounds the child as an atmosphere, which he breathes as his breath of life….”
~ Charlotte Mason
Weekly Nature Activity
Why study Nature? Please read the article about the importance of nature outings in your life and that of your children. While we have recommended a daily walk in a beautiful outdoor space, getting out everyday with young children is something that should be put high on the priority list.
Barefoot Days is so much more than just a curriculum. It is comprehensive, excellently laid out and takes your hand as a mom as you embark on the homeschool adventure with your children. The practical tips, art and music appreciation were of great value to me. It deletes trivialities and brings your focus to what is truly important. I wish this was available when my daughter was little!
~ Lizelle du Toit
The early years should be a time of free play, the exploration of nature and outdoor life, the establishment of good habits and character trains, the reading of lovely books and poems and a festival of living ideas and activities at your own home. Barefoot Days offers exactly that.
~ Lesinda Grobler
Why a Charlotte Mason-style Curriculum?
There are a few reasons why Charlotte Mason’s ideas are the most effective method of educating young children at home, particularly in the 21st century, even though she was an educator from the 18th century!
The young years
Charlotte Mason’s premise for the young years is that “In this time of extraordinary pressure, educational and social, perhaps a mothers first duty to her children is to secure for them a quiet and growing time, a full six years of passive receptive life, the waking part of it for the most part spent out in the fresh air.”
So many children are suffering from anxiety and depression and burn-out in schools and school-at-home homeschooling models. Charlotte Mason offers children and parents a different way. Giving our children the freedom to play, enjoy good books, spend hours outdoors and grow slowly at their own pace is one of the biggest blessings we can give our children.
Think on beautiful things
In an age where our children are bombarded with images from screens and advertising, where their ears are assaulted with noise that some call music, where they are constantly at threat to adopt a humanistic worldview, Charlotte Mason offers opportunities for parents to fulfil God’s command in Philippians 4:8 that they “think on things that are lovely and of good report.”
How do we do this in Barefoot Days? We supply you with art prints, music links, poetry to read and we encourage you and your children to spend time, daily, in nature through the books you read and adventures you will go on.
“We cannot measure the influence that one artist or another has on the child’s sense of beauty, upon his power of seeing, as in a picture, the common sight of life…”
“There is no part of a child’s education more important than that he should lay – by his own observation – a wide basis of facts towards scientific knowledge in the future.” ~ Charlotte Mason
A child’s duty
In the age of child-centred parenting, it is vitally important for parents to understand that the child is not the centre of the universe. They are precious and valued and while we are required through no burden to love and nurture our children, we should never make them the ones who dictate how the home runs or what happens in their education.
The necessity of habit
One of the important benefits of a Charlotte Mason education is the instilling of good habits in your children. Some are education habits like excellence, accuracy, best effort, attention, obedience, curiosity and others are life habits like personal care, chores, routines and productivity. We have included prompts for you in the guide to help you develop these habits in your children.
God honoured above all
While we appreciate that not everyone who uses this programme will be of the Christian faith, we do believe, as did Charlotte Mason, that the reason we are here in this world is to live lives that are circumspect and bring honour to God by obedience to the Bible, loving our families and serving our communities. This is the worldview of the programme and a thread that you will find running through Barefoot Days.
“Let the child grow up aware of the constant, immediate, joy-giving, joy-taking Presence in the midst of them.” ~ Charlotte Mason
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Barefoot Days Volume 1: Themes 1-3R3 100.00
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Barefoot Days Volume 2: Themes 4-6R3 400.00