WE’RE A FAMILY
Research says that exposing your child to positive, parent inclusive experiences at this age group is not only essential for your child’s mental health & happiness, but also because these are the key years when your child starts to develop their mindset for who they will become as an adult.
At this age group, children will be starting to make the transition from being parent centred, to exploring some independence, your child may be experiencing new emotions, feelings, and behaviours, they may even be starting out at full-time school and spending less time in the familiarity of home, leaving some children feeling overwhelmed, frustrated, or upset.
Considered by our parents and students as an extension of their family unit and as a partner in parenting their child, our unique 4–6-year-old, life-skill programme provides families with practical tools to compliment parenting, and to help your child to better understand their feelings to make positive choices to everyday life scenarios. Together, as a family we help to develop the fundamental life-skills for your child’s age and stage of development in a fun and family friendly environment, where skills learned on the mats will help your child to excel at home, school, and in everyday life.
unique, life-skill programme
Our unique, life-skill programme has been carefully developed to help your child excel at this critical age and stage of development -from the language the coaches use when communicating, to the physical skill content of each session, to the life-skill team talks, every part of the programme has been developed with your child’s stage in mind.
We invite you to hold pads for your child and get involved, making your child feel encouraged and supported. By investing in your child’s needs – physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially –your child will learn and grow into an empowered, happy, and healthy individual who will respond to the world in a positive, kind, and thoughtful manner.
Physically, your child during their toddler years, will have already started to develop their balance and co-ordination. Learning simple techniques within the programme, such as standing on one leg and kicking or knowing a jab from cross will support their development even further. Your child’s core strength hasn’t fully developed yet so don’t be surprised to see them slouching, falling over, or not always seeming to be in control of their own body. This is perfectly normal and over time, through their training, they will learn skills which develop their strength, balance and co-ordination which not only supports your child in meeting their NHS recommended developmental milestones, but in most cases, we see our Excel students exceed them.
In our 4–6-year-old sessions, our coaches are over animated in both tone of voice and body, we use simple language, eye contact, and only give 1-2 instructions per time, this is because your child has the same years’ experience of language as their age and so have a limited understanding of vocabulary, and whilst they may know a word, they may not understand it. They also haven’t fully developed their memory – ever asked them what they did at school today and they say I can’t remember? Through our life skill discovery, our coaches explain what certain words mean and repeat this so it stays in their memory, at this age group your child thrives on repetition, they enjoy knowing what comes next, ever wondered why they can watch the same episode from their favourite TV programme over and over again? Whilst older children need more variety, this is how this age group truly learns best, and in time learn the skills to become more engaged and focused, and better listeners.
Emotionally your child, at this age, will express their feelings, although they might need help and time to identify and talk about tricky emotions like frustration or jealousy. In our programme we support children to recognise their own feelings, encourage empathy and encourage respect for themselves and others. Our parents say that over time, they’ve experienced their children to have increased confidence & self-awareness, better self-control, persevere more with frustrating tasks and have fewer unexpected outbursts of anger and sadness.
Your child will become more interested in exploring new environments and be able to initiate play with similar aged children. More than often, your child will mimic others to create a connection through non-verbal communication, quite often in classes if one child falls over, we’ll see several others do this too, it’s all part of their socialisation at this age and stage of development. We use this knowledge in the programme with a copy me approach to teaching as well as using public praise to highlight individual students’ behaviours when we want the rest of the class to follow and copy their lead.
An unforgettable journey of discovery together
As every child is unique, it’s important to remember that your child will develop in these key stages at different times, no two children are the same- even at the same age. We treat each child as an individual using positive praise which builds self-belief and confidence. We encourage parents to team up together with us to become ‘good finders’ to reinforce positive choices and behaviours both on and off the mats.
As a family, we work together to support your child to become the best version of themselves and give the courage and confidence to EXCEL IN LIFE!
it was all worth the perseverance…
”We first tried excel when our eldest child was 3 years old after a friend recommended us. I remember thinking ‘what have we done’ as he was constantly on and off the mats and didn’t really pay any attention to what he was supposed to doing on the mats. This went on for weeks, to the point where we seriously thought about packing it in.
We persevered and then all of a sudden, something seemed to click with him. He is now 9 years old and is a brown / back belt in Juniors. He has come on so well and loves what he does. His youngest brother is now in Ministrike at 5 years old and he loves his classes.
For us, as parents, it was all worth the perseverance…”
-Rachel, Mum