Navigating middle school at home can be about as challenging as traversing Tolkeins legendarium Middle Earth!
The jump from grade 3 to grade 4 is a big one, and many children in school or home schooling find this a particularly large chasm to cross. It is for this reason that many home educating parents extend this grade 4 to 6 period to a 4 or 5 year period that will form the underlying structure for the senior years from which high school will be launched. These are the years where the child learns to love learning.
Often, this is where the gaps come from and this is where some stop their home schooling journey. One of the most common reasons is because they try to emulate a grade by grade progression they see in schools and become frustrated with a lack of infrastructure. The children yearn for more physical interaction with friends and parents yearn for some free time! It is not a successful model to surplant school into your home, as many parents and teachers who have dealt with this can tell you. Home education is not the same as institutionalised education to start with, and to bring it home into your private space brings many tangent psychological factors into play.
The intermediate phase is where the detailed subject matter starts coming into its own, and if the child is still struggling with Numeracy and literacy they will struggle to enjoy and deal with the content. This is actually the time where one can give more focus to extramural activities and sport, give the phase a longer stretch and allow your child the mental space to grow into the personality that is theirs alone. It is only at around age 13 to 15 that most children start becoming mature enough for content laden work and deadlines anyway, so for many home educators, this time is best spent as a child led journey.