The TRUTH about the Westminster 4+ Assessment

If you’re planning to send your son or daughter to the 4+ at Westminster (2027 entry), I encourage you to take the preparation process seriously. 

And no, sending your child to a pricey pre-prep is not 4+ assessment preparation. I really don't care what this ‘amazing’ pre-prep will tell you. They will tell you the they will prepare your child for their 4+ at Westminster. And I’m here to tell you that that is not enough. I’ve worked in many of these ‘amazing’ pre-preps. It’s not enough. And thinking it’s enough will lead to disappointment. 

I find it laughable that a headteacher of a top pre-prep will go around telling parents that they ‘don’t need to tutor’ and that simply sending their kids to their prep - school will suffice when they are not even the ones getting their hands dirty. They are not even the ones doing the teaching. They are not the ones day in and day out with all of the pressures on top of their shoulders that the teachers have at these particular pre-schools. And if you are a head teacher who is day in and day out in the classrooms supporting these children - obviously I am not referring to you. I’m referring to the majority of head teachers that I have personally worked with.

Please. 

Here is what taking the preparation process seriously looks like in case you’re curious…

It looks like showing up every single day for your child. 

It looks like dedicating 3.5 hours of learning per week with your child. 

It looks like showing up for your weekly lesson each and every week with your child. 

It looks like actually understanding what your child is learning in each area of the EYFS curriculum and fully understanding their areas of strength and their areas of weakness. 

It looks like not simply handing your child over to a pre-prep or nursery and crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. After all 'you’re spending a FORTUNE!’ so for sure it will go well!

Sure, for you and all of the other kids in that pre-prep if that’s your logic. That is simply not the case.

If you don’t take the preparation process seriously for the Westminster 4+ assessment, what are your chances of having the success you hope to have? 

Very slim. 

500 applicants. 

32 places. 

We know the calibre of students that they are looking for. 

Do you?

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment. 

The TRUTH about the Highgate 4+ Assessment (2026 entry).

The Highgate 4+ Assessment (2026 entry) ruffled a lot of feathers in many different ways. It wasn’t what any of us were expecting. And especially me! I have been personally preparing children for Highgate for over 20 years. But this year was surprising and it has definitely changed how myself and my team now view this 4+ assessment. 

I’m not here to speak negatively about any 4+ school so that’s not what I’m going to do. I actually really like and respect Highgate as a school. I know and still teach many children who currently go to this school. They are very happy and thriving at this school.

I also know many teachers who work at this school. I have a lot of respect for them too just as they do for me.

But what I will tell you is this…

Do not just choose this school as your 4+ school. Have a variety of other options too. I hope I’ve made myself crystal clear.

If you don’t already have another child studying at the school at the time of your child sitting the 4+ assessment at this school, know and understand that chances for them passing will be slim.

Not impossible but slim. We did prepare children who did not have siblings and who did pass last year but they were the exception and definitely not the rule (not for 2026 entry entry anyway).

We will not teach children from now on who are only applying to this school.

And there is a very good reason for that. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment. 

The TRUTH about the Merchant Taylors' 4+ Assessment.

First of all, it is very important that you know that at this school only 4-6 boys will pass the 4+ Assessment (2027 entry). I’m yet to hear how many will pass this year and once I do I will confirm this with you. Typically MTS will confirm this at their open days when they know exactly how many places they have on offer for their potential new boys.

Here is what the school says about their 4+ Assessment process:

Candidates are invited to school in groups of 10-15 boys for a session that lasts about an hour.

• The assessments are informal and are based on the Early Learning Goals of the Early Years Foundation Stage Curriculum. 

• All assessment activities will be very similar to activities that children carry out in their current nursery.

• We contact nurseries to provide written reports for all candidates.

• We are looking for teachability and sociability in our 4+ assessments. We are not looking to find out what the children know but whether they have the potential to flourish in our learning environment.

MTS are therefore looking for a very specific type of boy who will ‘flourish’ at their school.

Most of our boys who sat Assessment at this school made it to the Waitlist. They were all offered a place! Many of our clients will choose Habs over MT if offered both so places on the Waiting List often become available. I’m not boasting at all but basically if there were only 4 places available last year, 3 were offered to the students prepared by us!

If you are preparing for this school, I would highly encourage you to focus on the ‘teachability’ and ‘sociability’ aspect when preparing your son for Assessment at this school.

So supporting your son to go in and show how ‘teachable’ he is … eg. excellent listening, amazing focus, superb manners etc and then obviously to demonstrate that he is highly academic.

Sociability will be your son going in and showing that he is able to interact to a very high level and standard with both the teachers and the other children in the assessment. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment. 

You don’t quit 4+ assessment prep - you stop building habits.

You may be surprised to hear that I work with some parents who quit. Not many. But there are some. Especially now that we are supporting around 200 parents every single year with 4+ assessment preparation.

Some simply stop.

But they’re not just ‘quitting’. They’re not just ‘stopping’.

What they’re doing is completely stopping building the habits needed to support their children to be successful not just with their assessments but with their learning in general. Now, I obviously will never know if they enlist the help of someone else once they stop working with us but for the most part, they simply stop.

They want to hand over the responsibility to the child’s nursery or pre-prep and I don’t think this is wise at all. You never want to hand over the responsibility of your child’s success to another person. The responsibility of your child’s success is yours.

Only yours. 

Understand that. And understand that very well from as early as possible.

Why should a nursery or a pre- prep care as much as you about the success of your child? Tell me?

Why? 

Because you’re paying them money? 

Well, actually you’re not paying the teachers are you? The teachers are on their own salary provided by the nursery/pre prep/ school, You are funding the business or the school or the nursery.

That is all. 

Having money does not equate to 4+ assessment success. All of the clients we work with here at CMT have money.

That’s obvious, no? 

If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be able to afford a 30k - 50k education yearly for their children. 

When you stop supporting your child with their 4+ assessment preparations you stop building the daily habits of reading with them daily, of doing numbers with them daily, of questioning daily or writing daily etc, etc. When you stop building the habits it’s obvious that your child will never make as much progress as the child who is doing these things every single day or for 3.5 hours a week (which is what I recommend to our clients). 

Our clients know that daily habits will support their children to not only be wildly successful in their 4+ assessments but to also be wildly successful in the progress that they make with their learning in general. 

For your challenge today, I would like you to play ‘Pom pom avalanche’ with your child. It’s very simple. Grab a colander, some pom poms and pipe cleaners (all things you can quickly buy off Amazon). Fill the colander with pom poms and turn the colander upside. Place pipe cleaner through the holes of the colander. Invite your child to remove the pipe cleaners. As they remove them, some of the pom poms should fall to the table. Excellent for fine motor control and focus and concentration. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment. 

Don’t give up before it feels natural and simple.

It’s so easy to just give up. 

But is it the right thing to do? 

No, it is not. 

Giving up might give you that sense of relief initially but its a false sense of relief.

Before learning feels ‘natural and simple’, you will need to go through some very uncomfortable experiences. 

Your child might not want to do what you’ve asked them to do. 

Your child might refuse to hold their pen and write. 

Your child might tell you that they do not want to hold the scissors in the way that you have shown them. 

Your child might throw the play doh at you rather than make what you have asked them to make. 

It may take your child months/years to learn to identify numbers. 

It may take your child months/years to learn any of their phonics.

Will you give up? Or will you keep going? 

That is what distinguishes the successful amongst you. 

Those of you who give up will never have the success that our clients who keep going will have.

Our clients who put in the work. Our clients who are fully dedicated and take full ownership over their child’s learning. 

It won’t feel ‘natural and simple’ for a long time.

Are you willing to keep going until it does? 

For today’s challenge, I’d like you to play a game called ‘Light and Dark Silhouettes’. Find a dark corner in your home. This could be inside a tent or you could make shift one with chairs and blankets. Turn on some calming music and ensure it is super dark. Grab a torch or another source of light and go inside the tent! Let your child experiment with light and dark and create silhouettes inside the tent. They can do this with their hands or with other objects. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in any assessment or with your child’s curriculum acceleration.

The ABSOLUTE worst time to start preparing for the 4+ assessments… and when most parents start.

You may not like to hear this but there IS the perfect time to start preparing for the 4+ assessments and there is the ABSOLUTE worst time to start preparing for the 4+ assessments.

I have always recommended a full 12 months of assessment preparation for the 4+ assessments. Many of our clients start well before this. These are our ideal clients. The clients we most want to work with. The parents who see way beyond assessment preparation. They have a long term vision for their children’s learning and not a short term one.

There are many agencies out there who can support you with ad-hoc tuition. ‘Here and there’ tuition and ‘as and when I can be bothered’ tuition. That’s not what we offer here! So if that’s what you’re after, you’re totally in the wrong place.

Our busiest times for enquiries tend to be in the summer months (July and August). By this point, our students will only have about 3-6 months of assessment preparation. 

This is not enough. 

Keep in mind that the majority of our students already with us preparing for the 4+ have already been with us for 6-12 months but the time these clients are just getting started.

Do we have children who are successful with 3-6 months of assessment prep? Of course we do. 

But…

Our clients and students who are successful need to work so much harder. And the process is not nearly as enjoyable as it is for our clients who begin at least 12 months before the assessments. 

So whilst it is the worst time to get started, it’s still you getting started so please don’t let this put you off. If you are starting late - who cares? Just get started. Take full ownership and responsibility over your child’s learning and go all in to support them to the best of your ability to be very successful in any 4+ assessment. 

For today’s challenge I’d like you to play the ‘Family Memory Box Game’. Get a shoe box or an empty box and fill it up with photographs of your family. If you digitally keep your photos like I do, print some photos out. Throughout the day pick out different photos and discuss who the person is and what is special about this person to your child. You could ask questions like, ‘Why is aunty important to you?’ ‘How does your grandmother make you feel?’ ‘What is your favourite thing that you have done with your cousin?’ 

So much vocabulary boosting in this game! And so many beautiful memories that you can evoke by just looking at photographs together.

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in the 4+ assessments. 

Don’t give up because you think it’s not going ‘perfectly’.

Many of our clients want things to go perfectly when it comes to their children’s learning. They have this picture perfect view of what learning should look like.

Perhaps they picture their child coming out of their bedroom, skipping along and being delighted to see the learning that they have set up for them. When in reality perhaps they wake up crying from a sleepless night, grumpy and highly irritable. Perhaps your child is unwell.

They see the learning you have set up for them and they pick up a puzzle piece and throw it across the room. Perhaps they have no desire to complete the learning that you have set up for them.

Perhaps all they want to do that morning is go and sit and play with their magna-tiles by themselves. Nothing has gone wrong. 

Learning is not picture perfect. It never is. And if someone leads you to believe that it is for them, it’s just simply not the case.

Do you think when I worked full time in schools with 20-30+ children in my classes that every day was picture perfect for each and every individual child? 

Far from it. So why do so many of you expect it to be? 

It will never be. 

There will be times that it will go perfectly well and there will be times that it won’t. If you expect this to be the case, you will avoid being deeply disappointed. You will avoid putting so much unnecessary and unrealistic pressure on yourselves.  

For today’s challenge I’d like you to play ‘Number Hunting’ with your child. Take a large bowl and fill it with rice. Inside the rice hide several numbers (depending on your child’s number recognition ability). Ask your child to put their hands into the rice and to pull out a number. Once they have pulled it out, ask them to tell you the number! If they don’t know the number, you tell them and have them repeat the number to you. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment. 

Doing it even when you don’t feel like it.

Let me be brutally honest with you. There are going to be times where you simply don’t feel like completing learning with your child.

There will be times where you will wake up and think, ‘Oh, they will learn that at school/nursery and I don’t need to bother!’ And having thoughts like this is fine and completely normal. We are not robots. We are humans.

And as humans there will be times where we simply don’t feel like doing something.

Perhaps your child is ‘playing up’. 

Perhaps your child is not in the mood. 

Perhaps your child is unwell. 

Perhaps you’re unwell. 

Perhaps you have some urgent work deadlines. 

Whatever. 

There will be times you don’t feel like doing it and that’s ok. 

Expect that to happen. 

Know it will happen.

And when it does happen, you will be delighted that you have a plan in place and that you know exactly which learning you would like to be doing with your child that week. 

For today’s challenge, I’d like you to choose just 5 minutes of your day to dedicate to completing some learning with your child. Perhaps you can do 5 minutes of phonics or 5 minutes of counting. Perhaps you simply want to read for 5 minutes with your child. Just dedicate 5 beautiful minutes to sitting down and being fully present and learning with your child.

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in any assessment or to support your child with their curriculum acceleration.

What to do when excuses come up...

Welcome to Day 2 of the 90 Day Challenge!

Oh excuses will come up! 

You’ll come up with them and other people will come up with them for you! 

You will think to yourself that a better time to start learning with your child is some distant time in the future (that doesn’t exist!). You know perhaps when they are 3/4/5/etc? Well, that is incorrect. 

The best time to start is from 18 months as I discussed in Day 1 of this challenge. 

Delaying starting will simply delay all of the beautiful learning experiences that you could be having with your child. 

When excuses come up simply ask yourself this one question? 

What do I want for my child? If the answer is something like …

‘I want the best education possible for my child’ then please just remember this answer when your brain starts making ridiculous excuses.

When people start telling you things - oh people will have a lot of things to tell you about the way YOU are raising YOUR child just remember your answer to that question. 

For today’s challenge I’d like you to simply place a pencil in your child’s hand and observe how they hold it. If you would like to email me a picture or a video of your child’s pencil grip, you can. I will send you feedback on how to support your child to improve their current pencil grip. 

Email office@creativemindstutors.com or text me directly with a picture on 07956677783.

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment or with their curriculum acceleration.

The reality of the Habs' Girls' 4+ Assessment.

Often a surprise for some parents. 

Typically parents start quite late preparing their daughters for their 4+ assessments. 

Not all girls will pass this assessment. 

You need time to cover the full 4+ curriculum. 

Your daughter needs time to fully understand what exactly is expected of her in this 4+ assessment and go in and show only that! 

There’s no need to be surprised, shocked and angry. 

What there is a need for is to be calm, prepared and laser focused. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment.

The 90 Day 4+ Challenge - Proof that assessment preparation can lead to extraordinary results.

Day 1/90

Why starting at 18 months old matters. 

If you know with certainty that your child will be going to a 4+ assessment, the best time to start is from 18 months with a bespoke and tailored programme of study. 

It’s NOT too early! 

Your child is NOT ‘too young’! 

Your child will NOT ‘just going be doing worksheets all day!’

You are NOT ‘ruining their childhood!’ 

In fact, I knew at 18 months of age that my son would NOT be going to a 4+ assessment but I decided that this was the age to begin with his own bespoke and tailored curriculum and I have never looked back. It was the best thing that I ever did for him and I continue to do it for him. 

Starting at 18 months old matters because you have so much more time to enjoy the learning experience with your child. 

It matters because your child will soak up everything you are teaching them. 

It matters because what is the alternative? 

I have no idea what else I would have been doing with my son if I didn’t have his curriculum programme. 

Yes, we would go to the park and we would spend countless hours each day outside and in nature. This was and still is of vital importance for me. But if I didn’t have his structured curriculum what would we do instead? 

Play? 

We did that all the time as part of his curriculum programme! 

It feels so good to have a structured plan and to watch your child make such incredible progress. 

For today’s challenge, I would like you to simply write down three new things that you would love to do with your child this week. It could be as simple as a new lego set or a new play doh set or a new puzzle. Then open up your calendar or your diary and schedule 5 minutes of your time to do these activities with your child. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in the 4+ assessments or support your child with their very own Curriculum Acceleration Programme. 

One of the hardest schools to pass at 4+ for our girls.

Notoriously, parents that we come across anyway don’t tend to prepare their daughters for this school or they start preparing very late. 

Typically JAGS parents will contact us in the autumn term to prepare for JAGS. 

With only 36 places available and hundreds of girls applying for this school, what will set apart your daughter from the crowd? 

Well, your daughter will be very strong and capable academically (and if you don’t know what this means or what this looks like, work with teachers that do!). 

I know that there are very mixed messages out there about the JAGS 4+ Assessments with parents telling other parents ‘not to bother preparing’ and that they sent their own daughters to this 4+ assessment ‘completely unprepared’ and ‘still managed to get them in.’

Well, those people are lying to your faces and if you believe them that is up to you. 

Sadly, you won’t know if you should have believed them or not until after the 4+ assessments have completed will you? And by that point it will be too late.

Preparing for Jags for 2027 entry and beyond? 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment. 

The 2 lies about 'being ready' for 4+ assessment success.

There's are 2 lies that keep smart, capable parents from ever preparing their children for having the highest possible chances for success in their 4+ assessments.

It sounds like this:

"They are just too little! Now is just not the right time.”

It sounds responsible. Humble, even. Like you're being honest about where you and your child are.

But let's look at it.

Is your child really too little?

Is now really not the right time?

If you’ve sat and wondered for even a few minutes if you should be doing more to support your child with their assessment preparations then guess what?

You've done something most people never do.

A part of you believes that it is up to you to prepare your child for success in their assessments. A part of you knows deep down that it isn’t just the school’s responsibility to prepare your child to be successful in their assessments.

I truly believe that no one, hear me carefully, no one will ever care about the success of your child more than you do. Ever.

If you truly want to ensure that your child is ready - really ready to go into any 4+ assessment and have the highest possible chances for success, give yourself the opportunity to explore that thought further.

Your child being ‘too little’ and the ‘time not being right!’ are just lies.

Read that again: Your child being ‘too little’ and the ‘time not being right!’ are just lies.

Perhaps you fear what your friends and family will think of you when you tell them that you are teaching your 2/3/4 year old?

Perhaps you believe what these schools are telling you when they tell you that you shouldn’t prepare your child?

Perhaps you haven’t got this all figured out and perhaps you are doing your child a huge disservice by not exploring all of the options available to you.

You most likely don’t have it all figured out when it comes to preparing for the 4+ assessments because most likely this process is completely new to you. And like any new process in this life, we all need guidance and we all need support. And it’s absolutely fine to ask for help.

Nobody is asking you to be the perfect parent with everything figured out. That’s impossible and doesn’t exist just FYI.

The 4+ Emerald Curriculum asks you to truly take full ownership of your child’s 4+ assessment preparation and ultimately your child’s 4+ assessment success! It asks you to dedicate 3.5 hours per week of learning with your child. It asks you to cover a broad and vast curriculum with your child that will challenge them in ways you most likely never ever thought was even possible.

We take care of the rest.

You don’t need to be perfect but you do need to be willing. Willing to feel uncomfortable along this journey and willing to dedicate time, effort and energy to your child’s ultimate 4+ Assessment success

The Emerald Curriculum is £300 per month with our Company Director and £260 per month with one of our exceptional Senior Teachers and there are very few spaces remaining for support with 2027 entry.

With our programme, you have ongoing access to your teacher to have all of the support you need to support your child to the best of your ability to have tremendous success in their assessments.

Book your Sample Lesson and Sample Week today.

The reality of the UCS 4+ assessment.

A very popular and over subscribed school at 4+. 

If you plan to send your son into the 4+ assessment at UCS you will know and deeply understand that he will need to be thoroughly prepared. 

By far, this is the school where we get the angriest clients. 

Let me tell you why. 

Typically the clients who are preparing their sons for UCS will start way too late. Typically around the summer to autumn time. This leaves them with about three to five months to prepare.

Even though I will always be super honest will all clients that work with us here at CMT, many of these clients seem to be surprised when their sons do not pass this 4+ assessment. 

They seem to then get angry with us. 

It is certainly not our fault! 

Although I fully understand it’s easier to blame someone else than to take responsibility for your own actions! 

UCS needs 12 months of focused assessment prep. And if you start later than this, take responsibility for this. And don’t be shocked if you will start preparing for the 7+ instead. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment. 

The reality of the Habs Boys 4+ Assessment.

Do you dream of Habs Boys for your son? 

This is not an ‘easy’ assessment to pass. And if people tell you that it is, I would suggest you turn the other way and leave these people alone!

Countless boys will not pass this 4+ assessment. 

Our boys were prepared to a very high standard. Our boys were able to go in and show the Habs 4+ Assessors exactly what they were looking for. They covered a broad and vast early years curriculum with our exceptional team of teachers. 

Having 12 months of assessment prep will undoubtedly put your son ahead of the game when it comes to this 4+ assessment. It will most certainly set your son apart from the boys who had little to no assessment preparation. It is so obvious to me. To many of you it is not. 

The expectations of Habs’ Boys’ will be incredibly high and you must prepare your son to the best of your ability to truly go in and shine. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment. 

The reality of the Guildford High 4+ Assessment.

A very popular school we prepare for. 

A very misunderstood 4+ Assessment. 

Why do parents have such a sense of certainty that their daughter will just go into this 4+ assessment and be offered a place?

This is simply not the case. 

Many, many girls each and every single year do not pass this 4+ assessment. 

If you’re going to uproot your whole life for a school, I suggest you dedicate at least 12 months of time to prepare your daughter for this assessment. 

Contrary to what other people will tell you, your daughter is not guaranteed entry to Guildford High at 4+ Assessment. You do realise that this is why they have a 4+ assessment in the first place, right? 

If every single girl was guaranteed entry, why bother with a 4+ assessment? 

So many girls will be applying for very few places at 4+. 

So be laser sharp aware of the expectations. Be laser sharp aware that you must prepare your daughter for this 4+ assessment and then go all in to ensure that she is in the best possible place to go in and have the highest chance for passing tis 4+ assessment. 

Our girls who have historically (over the last 20 years) passed this 4+ assessment are the girls who are highly academic. Are the girls who have mastered all areas of the EYFS curriculum before going into this 4+ assessment. Are the girls who can read and who can write. 

People will tell you that this is not the case. People will tell you that their daughters were not able to do such things? I do not believe them and you shouldn’t either. 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment.

The reality of the Manor Lodge 4+ assessment.

Why is ML so misunderstood by parents applying to send their sons to the 4+ assessment? 

Why do parents feel so secure within themselves when they apply to this school? 

Why do parents assume that their child will just be offered a place to study at this school? 

Do not see this school as a ‘back up’ school.

It is not a back up school.

Let’s be crystal clear on that.

The reality of the Manor Lodge assessment is that on the assessment day, you will see many, many children going in to be assessed. Your child will be ‘collected’ by one of the assessors and taken to be assessed on a 1:1 basis. Ensure your child is aware of that before you take them to this assessment! Expectations will be just as high as any other 4+ school that you will be applying to. 

It will be challenging to be offered a place at ML based on the sheer number of children applying for a place here. 

Will your children be ready for their 4+ Assessment at ML? 

Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment. 

The reality of the Falkner House (boys) 4+ assessment.

Being ‘teachable’ is something that is very easy to spot in a 4+ assessment. Imagine a group of 20-30 boys and imagine looking for the boys who would be easiest to teach! 

What would you see? 

In one corner you will see boys who are concentrating and focusing on the tasks provided for them. In the other corner, you would see boys not at all interested in the tasks and trying their best to do anything else but the task that they have been asked to do. 

In one corner you will see boys fully engaged in conversation with the teacher/s and answering their questions to a very high level. In the other corner, you will see boys not really answering the teacher’s questions or not communicating to the level expected. You will see boys answering questions in a simplistic manner or even just giving yes or no answers. 

Communication and language are two key components at FH. Parents of boys who did not pass were often given this feedback…

That their sons did not communicate the level expected. 

Will your son be ready for his 4+ Assessment at FH? Book your Assessment Consultation Discovery Call today and find out how we can support you every step of the way to have tremendous success in this 4+ assessment.

Do you expect learning in the early years to be linear?

When we first start working with some of our clients, they have this belief that learning is linear.

That their child will ‘just get it’. It’s so easy after all? Well, to you it is! To 2 and 3 year olds it won’t be.

What you need to expect is for learning to be bumpy.

It will be up and down. It will have twists and turns.

Your child will get something instantly and will not get something else so easily.

Your child will love certain areas of learning and they will not like others at all. Nothing has gone wrong. As soon as you make it mean that something has gone wrong, guess what will happen? You will just give up.

You will say to yourself things like:

‘Well what’s even the point?’

‘Why am I bothering?’

‘He will just get it nearer the time of the assessment!’ (that’s a sneaky thought which is a complete lie by the way). 

Learning is never linear.

Even when your child does go to school, do not expect learning to be linear.

Do not expect for your child to just make progress in a linear manner. They will not.

And expecting them to will just lead to disappointment and comparison to others who you just assume ‘get it!’ but that is most certainly never the case. 

Our most successful clients are the clients who know that learning will not follow a linear pattern.

Our most successful clients are the clients who don’t get discouraged when their children do not learn their phonics as quickly as they expect that they should.

Our most successful clients are the ones who know that it might take their child a long, long time to recognise numbers and even when they don’t recognise numbers, they will relentlessly continue to show them.

Our most successful clients are the clients who continue to ask their children a variety of different questions even though their children don’t answer in the manner that they would like them to.

Our most successful clients are the  ones who are willing to be disappointed and know that success will only come to them if they carry on and persevere. 

Ready to accelerate your child’s learning? Book your Sample Lesson today. Final 4 times with me before I close the programme for a while.

3 mindset hacks that will support you to have 4+ success

If you are embarking on your 4+ assessment preparation journey, here are 3 mindset hacks that will support you to have 4+ success.

1. Understand that your child is not ‘too young!’

It seems like such a pretty and factual thought. But what does it mean anyway? If you are enquiring about the 3+ and the 4+ then of course your child is ‘young’. I know this already by looking at your enquiry! But your child is definitely not ‘too young’. 

‘Too young’ for what? 

‘Too young’ to learn new things? 

‘Too young’ to take part in fun and exciting activities with you?’

‘Too young to sit for extended periods of times?’ 

I will agree with you on that last one. But I don’t agree with you on the others. 

2. Know that your child will absorb what you teach them like a sponge. 

Whether they demonstrate it to you or not, they are absorbing literally everything that you teach them like a sponge. And everything that you teach them and especially if you teach them regularly will remain in their memory and will eventually come out! 

3. Know that you are setting them up for future success. 

Regardless of going to an assessment or not, learning with  your child is simply the most beautiful thing that you can do. Yes, it is an investment but I am always delighted to spend money on my son’s learning and development and I know so many of you are too! 

Preparing for the 4+ assessment for 2027 entry and beyond? Book your Sample Lesson today!