Suddenly there’s a noise…

It could be the clang of a gong. Or a peel of laughter.

Our Mystery Guest has arrived…

It's time to open The Park

Hosted by our Mystery Guest, mornings are spent in The Socratic Playground

… building the thinking habits and the skills that will protect our children against the many ways modern life will try to undermine their independence of thought.

Through a series of fast-paced challenges and games, the kids compete in teams and go head-to-head to do battle in games packed with action and imagination.

Find out below about some the thinking traps we learn to defend against, building ninja thinking warriors during our summer at The Park.

  • If Ooga Ooga, our caveman host for the week, has a superpower, it’s survival. He thinks fast – but only in Black and White: danger! safety! friend! foe!

    Ooga Ooga will help us to explore why black and white thinking made sense for him but can be bad for us. We'll see how it pushes us to extremes, sparks conflict, and hides nuance.

    We’ll learn to spot when our inner caveman takes the wheel and use questions to wrest back control - swapping black-and-white thinking for full-colour curiosity.

  • The power and the perils of story

    Our host is an Egyptian Pyramid - a symbol of what we can achieve when we are united by a shared story.

    But stories that feel good can also mute our scepticism.  We can get swept up by a good story, believing or doing things because the story feels good, not because it’s true.

    Through playful challenges, we’ll learn to pause when we hear a magnetic story and ask smart questions before deciding if it’s true.

  • Why to fear yours and other people’s

    Socrates is still remembered three thousand years after his death as one of the smartest men to have lived.  And yet he said that “the only thing I know is I know nothing.”

    He understood that life is messy, contradictory, and that certainty often signals ignorance. With Socrates as our guide, we’ll learn to question certainty — our own and other people’s — and to embrace the power of an open, curious mind.

  • When the facts change, I change my mind, right?

    Echo, a fast-talking, phone-loving teenager, is happiest in her online echo chamber, hearing only ideas she already agrees with. She’ll help us examine why we resist changing our minds, even when the evidence says we should.

    Through high energy games and challenges, we’ll learn to spot the mental barriers — and practise breaking through them.

  • Our guide this week is JFK, the U.S. President who was once caught out by group think. Surrounded by smart advisers who all agreed with each other, he approved an invasion of Cuba that turned into a disaster. Later, Kennedy became a master of how to combat group think and he’s here to share his lessons with us.

    We’ll explore why groups can push us to stay silent, copy each other and ignore our doubts — even when we sense something is wrong. Through fast-paced games and challenges, we’ll practise spotting group think, asking brave questions and learning the devices we can use to make space for different voices (including our own).

  • Data is the new (fools) gold

    Our guide is Abraham Wald, the brilliant WWII statistician who spotted a deadly mistake: his team wanted to armour the parts of fighter planes that came back to base with the most bullet holes — but he realised those were the planes that made it home. The real danger was in the places with no holes at all.

    Wald loves data — but knows it can fool you. This week, the kids will tackle surprising stats, sneaky graphs and “true but tricky” facts. They’ll learn to look for what’s missing, ask sharp questions, and spot when numbers are telling the wrong story.

Learning through play - children holiday fun - puzzle solving

Because a child who knows how to think can change the course of their life

Personalised online tutoring - AI driven learning - kids at a screen studying - academic boost

After lunch, the tempo shifts and it’s time for 90 minutes of personalised tutoring

Focused, data-driven learning that boosts each child’s academic firepower.

Adaptive online lessons are built bespoke for each child from a smart diagnostic, so that every child follows a plan that tackles their gaps and fills them first before building upward from rock-solid foundations.

It’s screen time of the right kind: interactive, purposeful and fully supervised, with tutors guiding and celebrating each child’s progress.

Afternoons are spent building a skill that brings your child joy

Skill development - kid public speaking

Tutoring time each day ends with a surprise to look forward to — sometimes edible, sometimes explosive, always unforgettable.

And this is followed by our Pick & Mix hour, where children choose between art, music, gardening, cookery, drama, debating, touch-typing, knot-tying or sport, to develop mastery in the skill of their choosing.

To close the week, we Flip the Floor

Parents become pupils as the children take charge and teach what they’ve learned.

Kids teaching their parents

Because the best way to lock in new knowledge is to teach it.