At The Fern Club, we hope to help children find a love of learning which will last a lifetime. Children by nature are inquisitive, impulsive and enthusiastic, sadly this diminishes over time. We’re not talking about formal education, we’re talking about learning which happens through pure play. No agenda, not aiming for grades or targets, just pure and simple play for the sake of playing. Children learn best when they’re in a safe setting they feel confident in and surrounded by the familiar; a parent or location.

Our philosophy on learning is that you the adult become a “learning buddy”. Your job is to facilitate enthusiasm, ask leading open ended questions and to get involved only when necessary. We hope that this becomes one hour of your week solely dedicated to having fun whilst learning (or refining) skills with your child. Our goal is that it becomes a journey for you as a family; one which doesn’t stop when the class ends but continues throughout your week. Perhaps your little one will want to replicate something they’ve tried during class, or would like to talk about what they did and the best… ask questions about the skills and activities they tried!

There’s a fantastic concept we love at The Fern Club, the Zone of Proximal Development. This is how we teach and would love to teach you the how to harness it too.

The Fern Club was set up to create learning opportunities for children and parents together. Not finalising any topic but opening a dialogue about what they experienced. Learning never stops but our enthusiasm as adults tends to. Once we finish school or university, adults find themselves in the rat run of a career with bills to pay. It’s a shame that learning becomes synonymous to a chore but how wonderful would it be to take the negatives away and learn for fun again! Remember back to when you learnt to ride a bike, the freedom and sense of achievement as you wheeled along the pavement. Or when you learnt to cook your trademark dish to perfection! These opportunities are still there but as an adult we do have to find the time and work for it.

For children at The Fern Club, it would be wonderful if those inquisitive instincts could be nurtured and harnessed into wonderfully creative thinkers. Perhaps the next big thinkers of tomorrow. Through play and opportunity to experience science, technology, engineering, art and maths in a relaxed, informal, playful way, we hope that children lose that fear of failure and gain a love of learning to last a lifetime.