The S4K Way
Book a Free Taster Today
The Birth Of The S4K Way
Sport4Kids was founded by Steve Jones and Dr Mark Gould, who jointly have a passion for child development, entertainment and sporting excellence. Joined by James Porter and the ActivKids brand in 2015, everything that we do at S4K is designed from the child’s perspective, using the best teaching and coaching methods to provide families with the best sporting experience possible. We refer to this special experience fondly as the “S4K Way”.
The Sport4Kids mission is to revolutionise children’s sport and build confidence in every child. The S4K Way differentiates us from all our competitors and allows us to provide our families with a world class sports education. We prepare our children for a lifetime of competitive sport by building confidence through skills and entertainment to promote a healthy mind, body and active lifestyle. From fun we can develop engagement and from engagement, our children will develop passion. We want to help each child to become the very best that they can be one smile, one moment and one class at a time.
Building blocks of the s4k way…
World Class Skills: We develop coaching and activity programs that take the best skills from around the world in a given sport and break them down into mini and micro motor skills for our children to learn.
Montessori Teachings: Inspired by Montessori teaching methods each technique is broken down into its smallest physical movements and each child develops at their own pace. Innovative products that are both entertaining at toddler level whilst developing mini and micro motor skills that are the building blocks for complex technical skills and elite competition. We refer to the prepared child who builds core muscle motor skills whilst having fun.
Child Developmental Psychology: In our lesson design, we reflect many child development psychology principles and frameworks and combine all children’s learning senses. We use a combination of sensory experience for children by mixing visual aids, cartoon characters, analogous learning and stories, music, mantras, demonstration, sports furniture, equipment, repeated learning cycles and practice books to help build the best environment for child learning and development.
Entertainment: Wrapping highly technical skills and mini motor memory exercises in fun, entertaining programs that build fun, enjoyment and passion for sport. This fuels each child’s passion and engagement. Fun is critical to forming engagement in our children.
Pathways & Curriculum: The word class techniques are split into key pillars and comprehensive curriculum for each stage of development and age group. There are clear steps and a visible curriculum for parents to see what their child is doing and how the specific classes and exercises fit into the overall program.
Individual Progression: Each child progresses through a series of Pathways designed to build on each level extending technical mastery whilst monitor progress, building confidence in each child. Progression is core to all program design and child monitoring as well as the monthly skills cycle. Progression with Player Pathways, Progression with Assessments and Promotion through the levels of performance and grading that is aspirational and rewarding for children and parents.
Parent & Child Experience: A focus on the child, parent, school and nursery staff experience from end to end and making them all feel great about S4K and everything that it touches.
Practice@Home: Practice is a key part of the child development, parental involvement and the commitment to a journey of excellence that put the concept of 10,000 hours firmly into the development of each child on the journey to be the very best they can be. Each child has their own personal record book that is used in partnership with the parent to encourage and monitor Practice@Home. S4K believes that each child has ability and it is down to practice to hone that ability for each child to become the best they can be. World class ability is earned through practice and we talk of 10,000 hours or practicing a skill 10,000 times to become world class. Each and every child has the chance to become world class – it is all about the coaching and the hours of practice. In this sense The Practice@Home book and the circle of trust between the Parent, the S4K Coach and the Player is crucial.
Continued innovation: Constant R&D, innovation and creativity to build beyond world class products, services and sessions. Whether we are looking at new ways of teaching toddlers how to distinguish between their left and right feet or rhymes to help our tennis kids learn, we are always striving to improve our classes and activities.
Club Structure & Gradual Competitive Pressure: To offer children and parents the opportunity to access a gradual increase in completive experience from non-compete foot on the ball games, internal session matches, the S4K Tournaments, inter venue matches, friendlies and Club teams that play in local community leagues.
Elite Development: Take each sport and aim for beyond world class coaching by researching the best elite teams, their skills and attributes and the best sports programs in the word to become the market leader in each field. Market leadership and innovation come from going beyond world class and setting new standards by adopting techniques and approaches that have not existed before.
S4K Values: We are a compassionate and caring organization. We care for our people, our parents, our schools, our nurseries, our stakeholders our coaches and of course our children.
Productized for Consistency: The sports industry has never seen the level of productisation that S4K has executed. We release our lesson plans for all sports on a monthly basis and they undergo research and development each time to ensure that children receive the optimum level of coaching. All of our S4K venues – up and down the country – run the same activity, in the same way at the same time.
Parents as Partners: Treat parents as a true partner and stakeholder by educating in our methods and building a common language and circle of trust between the parent, the child and the S4K coaching team.
Sports Entertainer Profiles: We recruit, retain and promote sports entertainers and educators – not just coaches. We then train and educate our coaches in the S4K Way, its culture, methods and techniques. It takes our S4K Lead Coaches 4 months to qualify through the S4K University, allowing us to guarantee the best experience for our families.
Sport4Kids is the best place for children to begin their journey into sport. No matter the age of the child, we have the world’s best programmes to cater for every individual and the most highly skilled coaches in the industry. We look forward to welcoming you and your family soon.