Cross-curricular
CLIL from the first year
English carries real content: colours and shapes, animals and weather, numbers and simple science. Children learn something true about the world while they learn to say it.
Our pedagogical framework
Our Approach
Every Keystone course is built on the same foundation: children learn a language best when it arrives through play, story and song — and when what they learn returns, again and again, in new shapes.
01 — Method
How children learn with us
Five principles decide what a Tiny Joys lesson looks like from the moment a child walks in to the moment the book closes.
Play is the method, not the reward
Games, movement and hands-on tasks are where the language actually lands. Every lesson has something to do, not only something to repeat.
Story and song lead
Each theme is anchored by an original story and an original song. Children meet new language inside something worth listening to — and ask to hear it again.
The whole body learns
Total Physical Response runs through the course: children listen, point, touch, mime and move before they are ever asked to produce a sentence.
Many ways in
Visual, auditory and kinaesthetic activities are balanced across every theme, so a child who learns by looking and a child who learns by doing both find their way in.
Language returns in new shapes
Ten themes repeat across three levels while the targets step up. Nothing is met once and left behind — the spiral is what turns exposure into memory.
02 — Content
What they learn
Language is the vehicle. Alongside it, five strands run through all thirty themes of the series.
Inquiry
A Big Question in every theme
Each theme opens with a discovery question and returns to it through observation and hands-on work — the earliest form of STEAM habits.
Making
A project that ends the theme
Every theme is consolidated with a hands-on Maker project, so the last thing a child does with new language is build something with it.
Oracy
A staged speaking strand
Speaking is planned, not hoped for: joining in songs at Level 1, talking with a partner at Level 2, standing up and presenting at Level 3.
Foundations
Phonics and numeracy, embedded
Letter-sound work and early numeracy are lessons inside each theme rather than a separate book — sound discrimination and 1–10 at the start, digraphs and CVC reading by the end.
03 — Progression
What moves from one level to the next
The ten themes stay the same across the three levels. The targets do not. This is the spiral, written out.
| Dimension | Level 1 Age 4 | Level 2 Age 5 | Level 3 Age 6 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Language | Short memorised patterns — Hello, I’m… / This is my… / I like… | Present continuous, short answers and has / hasn’t got — What’s he doing? / Do you like…? Yes, I do. | Question-and-answer exchanges and the third person — Where does a doctor work? / They’ve got… |
| Phonics | Sound discrimination first, then the five short-vowel letter sounds (a, e, i, o, u) | Consonant letter sounds, moving into CVC blending | Digraphs (sh, ck, ng, ch, th, ee/ea, ai/ay, oa, oo) and CVC reading |
| Numbers | 1–10 and pattern recognition | 1–20 | 1–100 in tens, with simple operations and measuring |
| Oracy | Joining in songs and chants | Greeting, describing and talking with a partner | Presenting — standing up to tell the class about a project |
| Writing | Line tracing and colouring — pre-writing, no independent writing | Pencil control and letter tracing | Independent letter and number formation, word copying |
Each theme runs for about three weeks and follows the same lesson sequence: opener and song, vocabulary, language practice, story and value, phonics, numbers, Big Question, and a Maker project closed by an “I can…” self-assessment.
04 — Beyond the language
More than language
Values and social-emotional learning
Every story carries a value — sharing, kindness, honesty, respect, helping — modelled by characters children already trust, and marked in the book so teachers can name it.
Twenty-first-century skills
Critical thinking, creativity, collaboration and communication are built into the task design: sorting and “why?” questions, open drawing, pair and group work, role play.
Global citizenship and sustainability
At this age sustainability is a daily habit, not an abstract goal: water the plant, put the litter in the bin, share with your friend. Diversity and empathy run through the cast and the stories.
A bridge to home
Each theme ends with a Home Card that carries the language into the family in ten-minute pieces, so parents can join in without needing English themselves.
05 — Alignment
The frameworks we write against
We map our own outcomes to three public frameworks so that schools can see exactly where this course sits.
CEFR Pre-A1
Council of Europe, 2018
All three levels sit within the Pre-A1 band described in the Companion Volume, and level outcomes are written against its descriptors. Independent reading and writing are not targeted at this age.
Turkish pre-school programme
Ministry of National Education
Theme selection and developmental sequencing follow the developmental domains of the pre-school programme: cognitive, language, social-emotional, motor and self-care.
UN SDG 4.7
United Nations, 2030 Agenda
The values and sustainability strand is mapped to the education target of the 2030 Agenda, theme by theme, in age-appropriate behaviour rather than abstract vocabulary.
These are the frameworks our outcomes are written against. The mapping is our own work, not an endorsement by the organisations named.
See how it works in the books.
The clearest way to judge an approach is to open the pages it produced.