Children develop in several interlocking systems--in the context of their family, and within the interaction of such settings as home, school, and church (Russell, 2011). In South Africa, children's diverse backgrounds within families, neighborhoods, and sociocultural environments provide them with varied experiences and opportunities to learn. Children from diverse backgrounds come to school with different experiences, and the schools struggle to meet their assorted educational needs. The poor performance of learners in South Africa reflects the continued use of an instructional model that emphasizes school-based learning with abstract outcomes, and that evaluates pupils on the basis of constructs and concepts that ignore what children know and learn outside the school environment. In the context of South Africa, much attention centers on improving achievement rates within a framework whereby knowledge is treated largely as objective (Shisana, 2011). Such perceptions of education and achievement ignore other forms and sources of knowledge and seek to fit learners into existing frameworks of formal learning. Children take part in various activities within a multitude of networks and settings--from interactions with peers and families to life experiences in rural and urban areas. In this article, the authors outline different home and community-based activities that create useful learning tools, and therefore can help bridge the gap between home and school learning environments. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)