This article draws on a long term ethnographic study which explored the way the home based practices experienced by children in a marginalised community in a large South African city, Port Elizabeth, prepared them for, and supported them in, schooling. The study was informed by the field known as 'New Literacy Studies' and which draws extensively on the likes of Heath (1983) and Street (1984). It acknowledges that individuals have the power to exercise agency in the context of structural and cultural constraints but shows how, in this particular community, poverty and geography and the educational backgrounds of caregivers impacted on their best efforts to contribute to their children's development.