Testimonials
Below are a small section of wonderful reviews that we have received from the families that we have been lucky enough to have worked with.
Fun development was recommended to us through a friend, who also receives their service. Since our first session around 9 months ago, we could not be happier with the progress made by our son.
Katie is very warm, welcoming and friendly with an abundance of experience and patience working with children with special educational needs. She caters each session around our son's interests, his needs and with a learning objective in mind. The sessions are filled with lots of fun filled activities with songs, short and snappy tasks/games to keep our son's interest with a reward of choice time after each. Katie is also very flexible with her sessions, adapting them depending our son's mood, always managing to engage him into an activity and stay on task.
Before our sessions began our son barely spoke even singular words. His concentration skills were fleeting, only staying on task for a few minutes, he could not communicate his wants or needs and he often stared into space. Now he remains focused for the majority or even the whole hour, he can make choices, he can communicate his needs and wants (either through using pictures, singular words or simple phrases), he doesn't lose interest and stare into space and he enjoys the sessions.
Katie has also helped us as parents understand our son's needs and habits. She suggested that our son could have sensory processing needs. After reading up about it, he definitely seemed to be hyposensitive (needing more sensory input). Since this revelation, we have a better understanding to why he does certain things, and with suggestions from Katie, we have been able to help him meet some of these needs e.g. a peanut gym ball, has helped him regulate his excitement and need to jump on the sofa. Now he just hops on the ball, rolls and bounces on it when he feels the need to.
Katie is always going the extra mile, making resources for us to use and leaving games or activities that our son has enjoyed. Without Katie and fun development, our son would not have made the progress he has and we would not have the understanding of his sensory needs. She has really improved his quality of life and we can't thank her enough.
My daughter is taking sessions with Katie and fun development. I must say they are amazing. She is so dedicated, organized and hard working. My daughter response is amazing as she has language but no communicative language. It's now been 1.5 months and she had now a good eye contact with some communicative language.
They are really doing very well. Hopefully, she will give a lot more response as she is continuing sessions with Katie.
My son has dyslexia and has been seeing Cat from Fun Development for over a year.
Due to his learning difficulty he doesn’t like doing any extra reading or writing however he really enjoys his sessions with Cat.
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Cat is very creative and makes learning fun for him, she also teaches him techniques to make school life easier. Each session is different and Cat will incorporate subjects she knows my son is interested in so he is more motivated to do the tasks.
His reading and writing has really improved and he is becoming more confident in telling others how is best for him to learn.
Katie from Fun Development has been working with my daughter since she was 3 years old.
My daughter presented a delay in speech development. We found the support from the speech and language department to be more parent based and so we sought out someone who could work directly in a one to one with our daughter.
Katie visited us at home and built up a fabulous rapport with my daughter and ourselves. Bringing lots of ideas and super engaging activities for our daughter, we have noticed a considerable positive difference to the point where she is now at an expected level for her age.
Our daughter so looks forward to her sessions with Katie which have now continued into school. We receive great constructive feedback after each session which reassures us. I would highly recommend using Fun Development.
My Autistic/PDA daughter experiences extreme anxiety and Demand Avoidance.
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Some difficult school experiences due to the wrong environment and approaches have led to poor mental health and trauma resulting in not been able to attend School, she is currently home recovering. Her experiences have lead to a lack of engagement in learning, and the community. Leaving the house and everyday activities cause distress, extreme levels of anxiety and exhaustion, the world can feel very scary and overwhelming, she needs very individualised, specialised support, which Cat and Katie provide.
Cat and Katie have a great understanding of my Daughter and are very responsive to her sensory, emotional and learning needs. The service they offer is flexible, fun, and they are fully led by my daughters needs and interests which has helped her build a connection and trust in them both that is key to her recovery. wellbeing and engagement.
Their caring, inspiring, no pressure approach is helping my daughter build confidence in exploring new activities within the home and community, it is amazing to see her enjoyment in learning in a way that best suits her.
My son has relatively recently started working with fun development, but already I see a massive improvement in his speech.I have been very impressed with the sessions my son has had. Katie is so well prepared and is very skilled at engaging my son and making his learning fun. The sessions are so well tailored to his likes and interests and while he is learning to much he does not see it as work at all. His confidence in speaking has come on so much in a few weeks, and many people have noticed this also.
James really looks forward to his sessions and is very comfortable with Katie. Katie is so professional and kind. I would have no hesitation in recommending fun development to anyone wanting to help their child to develop and meet their potential.
My husband and I agree that it is certainly worth the financial investment and are so pleased to have them working with our son.
Cat has been tutoring our twin daughters for 8 months now and has been brilliant with them throughout that time.
The girls have a great time & lots of fun learning with her and always look forward to her coming.
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As a result they learn very well and retain what they’ve been taught. The improvement to their ability and therefore their confidence with school work has been really noticeable since Cat has been helping them. She makes learning fun and also leaves games and ideas for us to do with the girls until her next visit.
All topics have been covered at the required level to bring on their academic development. She made a special effort to come & help them just before their year 1 phonics test and they passed no problem.
We would recommend Cat as a tutor to any parent who was looking to help their child with their learning.
We started working with Fun Development when our son was 2 years and 9 months old. He has a hearing loss and speech delay and we were seeking extra help for him to reach his full potential, particularly in regards to communication skills - the key to interacting with the world and unlocking other learning. Although our son was attending nursery at the time, he did not seem to be making any progress with his speech and so we wanted to explore 1-to-1 tuition.
We found Fun Development through word-of-mouth and were immediately attracted to the way they were able to gain and keep our son's attention on a learning activity. We appreciate the way they listened and were interested in the details of our situation, and how they continually adapted the sessions depending on his strengths, weaknesses, current interests, and our parental observations.
It is now a year later and our son has made great improvements in his speech: he has a much wider vocabulary, better pronunciation and speaks in full sentences. Most importantly he now has confidence to use his voice in lots of different situations. He has worked very hard to achieve this, but we couldn't imagine this level of progress without the efforts of Katie and Catherine at Fun Development.
We started having help from Cat and Katie last year for my daughter, Grace, who is four and diagnosed with Autism with demand avoidance, sensory processing difficulties, ARFID, hypermobility and epilepsy.
Cat visits most weeks, both to work with Grace and also to help me with strategies for managing the challenges we face. I can honestly say that Cat has been a total life saver for us. I have no idea where we'd be without her! She's always gone above and beyond to help us and has consistently been the only professional involved in my daughters care that has worked hard to see behind the masking. This has been invaluable as Cat has been able to support me with other professionals who have only seen the masking and have been quick to dismiss the difficulties Grace has.
I would whole heartedly recommend Fun Development to anyone who may need a bit of extra support for their children and I'm so thankful that we have their help!
My child has been attending the farm setting of Fun Development for 2 months now. The outside setting and animals are the key to managing his anxiety. He has made a really good connection with Nic and has now began to trust her. She completely understands him and his needs and tailors every session to him.
It’s truly wonderful to see him in a supportive setting where he is happy, when I pick him up I can often hear his giggles from across the farmland.
I can’t recommend Nic and Fun Development enough.