Our approach

Why stories

Reading together at bedtime is one of the best-documented activities of early childhood: vocabulary grows, words for feelings settle in, and the sleep routine gets easier. When the child is the hero, they listen differently: engagement rises and new words stick better. As long as it is a real story, with a goal, attempts and a resolution, not a first name dropped into a generic template.

Ages 4-5: the Programme-cycle de l'éducation préscolaire

For ages 4-5 we follow the five domains of Quebec's Programme-cycle de l'éducation préscolaire, each with its official competency:

• Physical and motor: agir efficacement sur le plan sensoriel et moteur. The hero explores with their hands, wobbles, tries again.
• Emotional: construire sa conscience de soi. The hero names what they feel and what they need.
• Social: vivre des relations harmonieuses avec les autres. The hero negotiates, waits, repairs a quarrel.
• Language: communiquer à l'aide du langage. The hero talks, retells, plays with sounds and letters.
• Cognitive: découvrir le monde qui l'entoure. The hero counts for real, predicts, tests, explains.

The rule above all others: show, never explain. No wise adult delivers the moral at the end. The learning lives in what the hero does, tries, fails at and finally manages.

Ages 6-12: the PFEQ

In elementary school we follow the competencies of the Programme de formation de l'école québécoise: reading, writing, speaking, appreciating works, solving math problem situations, explaining scientific phenomena, the arts, physical education and the Culture et citoyenneté québécoise course. The program assesses the process as much as the answer, so our stories tell the strategies, the drafts, the revisions and the justified choices. From age 9, the societies visited are exactly the ones studied in class: the Iroquoians around 1500, New France, Canada around 1820, Quebec around 1900 and 1980, the Mi'kmaq and Inuit, the Incas. The bedtime story meets the classroom.

Ages 2-3: the research

No ministry program covers ages 2-3. We therefore claim no alignment and attach no competency tag at that age. Instead we follow decades of research (Whitehurst, Horst, Mindell): dialogic reading, where the parent asks small questions during the story; repetition, because words are learned best by rereading the same story; rhymes and refrains, which prepare reading; and a steady bedtime routine, which improves sleep.

How to help your child

• Ask questions during the story, not only at the end.
• Let them finish the refrains and the blanks, even if it slows things down.
• Connect the story to their day: did you do that today too?
• Reread the same story several nights: repetition is the engine.

What we never do

• Moral lessons delivered by an adult at the end of the story.
• Comparisons between children, or generic praise.
• Scary content at bedtime: no cliffhangers, no threat, ever.
• Sexuality education, at any age.