Paragon Kids Inc.

Paragon Kids Inc. 30 months to school age child care in Valleycliffe

Imagine a world where we learned emotional intelligence before we learned our ABCs. 💕Our future doesn’t need more five-y...
10/08/2026

Imagine a world where we learned emotional intelligence before we learned our ABCs. 💕

Our future doesn’t need more five-year-olds who can perfectly recite the alphabet or count to 100 and back. It needs kindness. Compassion. Respect. It needs people who understand their own emotions and recognize how their fears, insecurities, and experiences influence the way they see others.

It needs people who truly see people. Not as strangers, competitors, or inconveniences, but as fellow human beings. As part of the communities we belong to, each carrying their own experiences, struggles, and stories.

Imagine a world where giving someone the benefit of the doubt was our first instinct. Where curiosity came before judgment, compassion before criticism, and we were secure enough in ourselves to recognize that not everything happening around us is happening because of us.

And of course, they’ll learn their ABCs. They’ll learn to count. Letters, numbers, patterns, and language are woven into the world around us. Through play, stories, conversations, and everyday experiences, these skills can develop naturally with the right opportunities and support. They simply don’t need to be the measure of a successful childhood.

But learning to understand ourselves, regulate our emotions, trust our instincts, and navigate relationships? Those foundations deserve our attention from the very beginning.

Every interaction we have with and around children is a small piece of the future we’re creating. In the way we navigate conflict, respond to mistakes, speak about others, and demonstrate kindness, we’re modelling the very qualities we hope to see in the world.

We are raising the future. 🌎

At Paragon, we’re striving for a future where people see the best in one another, where compassion comes naturally, and where the strength of our communities is measured not only by what we accomplish, but by how we treat each other along the way.

That’s the goal. That’s the work. That’s the Paragon Philosophy™.

Before I became a parent, I thought I understood. 🍃I had spent years working with children and families. As a Director, ...
10/04/2026

Before I became a parent, I thought I understood. 🍃

I had spent years working with children and families. As a Director, I always tried to be a safe place for parents to bring their worries. Big ones, little ones, and the ones that perhaps seemed insignificant from the outside. I knew we were caring for their entire world.

But then I became a parent myself.

Suddenly, I understood it in an entirely different way.

Caring for their entire world is one thing but for most parents, this is all new. Their entire world has shifted. They are learning a tiny human while simultaneously becoming a new version of themselves. They are making decisions they have never had to make before, questioning things they never thought they would question, and carrying a kind of love that can make even the smallest things feel enormous.

The forgotten water bottle. The rough drop-off. The first bite mark. The nap that suddenly disappeared. The behaviour that feels completely out of character. The worry that maybe their child isn’t connecting, isn’t eating enough, isn’t sleeping enough, isn’t okay.

To an educator who has supported hundreds of children, some of these things can feel ordinary.

To that parent, with that child, they are the things that keep them up at night, that keep them distracted while at work or doing the things they enjoy, that replay over and over again in their minds day in and day out.

The Paragon Philosophy asks us to remember that.

We aren’t only here to support the child. We are here to build relationships with the people who love them most. To listen without dismissing. To share what we know without pretending we know their child better than they do. To offer reassurance when we can, honesty and transparency, and a safe place for families to say, “I’m worried about this,” no matter how silly they think it might be

Because the child does not arrive at our door alone.

They arrive with their people. Their history. Their routines. Their worries. Their culture. Their hopes. Their completely unique little family.

That is the village of Paragon 💕

And when we care for the village, we create a stronger place for the child to thrive.

Children carry an incredible amount of wisdom. ✨ Not the kind that comes from years of experience or knowing how the wor...
10/02/2026

Children carry an incredible amount of wisdom. ✨

Not the kind that comes from years of experience or knowing how the world works.

The kind that notices when someone needs a hug. That finds wonder in a puddle. That asks questions we stopped asking. That senses something isn’t quite right, even when every adult is pretending otherwise.

Children have a remarkable way of experiencing the world without all the layers we’ve accumulated as adults.

They feel deeply. They love fiercely. They are curious without needing a reason. They can find absolute joy in something we’ve walked past a thousand times without noticing. And sometimes, they just know.

After nearly 15 years of working professionally with children, I understand this more now than ever why we so often refer to them as the purest souls. 💕

There is something so magical about the way they move through the world before they’ve learned to second guess every instinct or measure every experience against what society expects of them.

I think we have a responsibility to protect that.

Not to preserve childhood in a bubble or shield children from every difficult experience, but to protect the parts of them that make childhood so extraordinary.

Their curiosity. Their intuition. Their imagination. Their capacity for wonder. Their beautifully unfiltered way of being themselves.

Because the goal isn’t simply to prepare children for adulthood.
It’s to help them arrive there without losing everything that made them so wonderfully themselves along the way.

And perhaps, if we pay close enough attention, we might rediscover a little of that magic within ourselves, too.

We have so much to teach children about the world. But they have an extraordinary amount to teach us about living in it. ❤️

What’s something unexpected you’ve learned from a child lately?

Nurture. Not manufacture. 🌿“Our job is not to decide who they should become, but to create the conditions in which they ...
09/30/2026

Nurture. Not manufacture. 🌿

“Our job is not to decide who they should become, but to create the conditions in which they can become more fully themselves.”

— The Paragon Philosophy™, The Child

Children are not blank slates waiting for adults to write their stories. They arrive with their own personalities, curiosities, temperaments, strengths and wonderfully peculiar ways of experiencing the world.

And while our role as educators is incredibly influential, it is not to decide who these little people should become.

It is to get to know them. Like really, truly know them.

To recognize the child who needs a little more time before joining the group. The one who always wants to help with every task. The one who will sprint across the room to greet every parent and child. The one who creates their own stories to an already written book. And the one who would rather spend an entire morning inside their imagination than participate in our beautifully planned activity.

To provide guidance without taking over. Boundaries without unnecessary control. Opportunities to explore, experiment, make mistakes and discover what they are capable of.

This doesn’t mean stepping back and letting children figure everything out for themselves.

It means being intentional about the environments we create, the relationships we build, the experiences we offer and the way we respond to each child.

But we also leave room for individuality, imagination and the unexpected.

Because the goal isn’t to produce a classroom full of children who think alike, behave alike and meet every milestone in exactly the same way.

It’s to help each child develop the confidence, skills and sense of self to navigate the world as the wonderfully unique person they are.

We aren’t here to manufacture a particular kind of child. We’re here to nurture the one standing right in front of us.

Each child is perfectly unique. 🍃✨

✨ For almost six years, we’ve used bits and pieces of other educational philosophies to help explain what we do at Parag...
09/28/2026

✨ For almost six years, we’ve used bits and pieces of other educational philosophies to help explain what we do at Paragon.

We’ve related with aspects of an emergent curriculum, held values similar to Waldorf and Reggio Emilia, and drawn inspiration from approaches that respect children, their individuality and the magic of childhood.

But we’ve never followed one particular curriculum or philosophy.

We’ve taken the pieces that resonate with us, questioned the ones that don’t, and slowly built something that feels distinctly our own.

After nearly six years of using other philosophies to help define who we are, we’ve decided it’s time to define Paragon for ourselves.

The Paragon Philosophy™ 🌿

I’m currently in the process of writing a book that puts our values, beliefs and approach to early childhood education into words.

From there, we’ll be slowly dissecting our existing materials, policies and practices to ensure that everything we communicate reflects the philosophy we’ve spent years developing.

The philosophy isn’t new. It’s been living and breathing in our classrooms since day one. We’re just finally giving it its own voice.

And since we’re putting all these thoughts onto paper anyway, I figured I’d share a few snapshots along the way. 💕

One week ago today, I walked away from an interview in tears. 😭 She said something that stuck with me:“I don’t want to f...
09/26/2026

One week ago today, I walked away from an interview in tears. 😭

She said something that stuck with me:

“I don’t want to find just a job. I want to find somewhere that is so aligned that my work doesn’t just feel like work. We only get this one life.”

What led us to the interview was undeniably the universe connecting our paths. She had just been offered a job and reached out to let me know that she would not be making it to the interview. I asked her if she would still speak with me and thankfully she did because those tears of joy I left with were mutual.

I’ve always believed that working in a program that doesn’t align with your own teaching philosophy is a little like putting water in a gas tank.

You can have an incredible educator and an incredible program, but if what they fundamentally believe about children, childhood and teaching doesn’t align, neither one is going to run quite right.

You can build gorgeous classrooms.
Buy beautiful materials.
Plan elaborate experiences.
Write an entire philosophy about the kind of childhood you want to protect.

But the people are what make it real.

I thought about that after my interview and about the many incredible educators already at Paragon who have described feeling some version of that same pull toward this place.

Something about Paragon felt like them.

And when you work alongside people who care as deeply as you do, who genuinely respect children, who believe in the work and who make you feel good just being in the room with them, even the mundane parts of the day feel different.

The giant cardboard spaceship is magical.

But so is laughing with your coworker while you clean sticky rice off the floor after lunch.

That’s culture.

We call our Teachers magic makers, but the magic isn’t something written into our curriculum.

It happens between people.

In the way we speak to each other. The way we show up for each other. The energy we bring into a room. The thousand tiny interactions children are watching and feeling every single day.✨

The curriculum matters.

But your coworkers might matter even more.

They very well might. ✨And somewhere along the way, we decided the solution to that was to give children fewer opportuni...
09/24/2026

They very well might. ✨

And somewhere along the way, we decided the solution to that was to give children fewer opportunities to break things.

Throughout my career in childcare, I’ve watched materials slowly disappear from classrooms.

Markers left without their lids? Take them away.

Paint not cleaned up properly? Take it away.

The cozy tent keeps turning into WrestleMania? Take it away. 😂

Something might break? Definitely take it away.

Of course, children’s environments need to be safe. But safe and child-proof are not the same thing.

Children deserve opportunities to be trusted with things that require care. To learn that markers dry out when we leave the lids off. That some things require gentle hands. That paintbrushes need to be washed. And yes, sometimes things break.

There’s learning in this experience.

Disappointment. Repair. Acceptance. Even a little grief for something they cared about.

When children aren’t using something the way we intended, maybe the material doesn’t need to disappear but maybe it needs more intention.

Have we shown them how to care for it? Are our expectations developmentally appropriate? Do they need more modelling or support?

Or… have they found a perfectly reasonable use for it that simply wasn’t our ideal intention? 😅

Trusting children with their environment tells them something:

I believe you’re capable.

And when you make a mistake, you can trust me to help you figure out what comes next.

Things will still get broken and marker lids will continue disappearing into whatever dimension currently has 40% of our magnatiles.

We’re not creating an environment that children can’t mess up.

We’re creating one they can learn to care for 🍃

We talk a lot about protecting the environment surrounding children. That environment doesn’t begin at the classroom doo...
09/22/2026

We talk a lot about protecting the environment surrounding children. That environment doesn’t begin at the classroom door. 🍃

It begins with the adults. And those adults exist inside a team.

I worked in childcare for years before opening Paragon, and I’ve experienced team culture from a lot of different seats.

I’ve been inside unhealthy cultures. I’ve watched them from the outside. I’ve watched incredible Educators slowly become different versions of themselves because of the environment they were working in.

And honestly, it was heartbreaking.

Because it never stays between the adults.

Culture has a way of leaking. If an Educator walks into a room feeling supported, respected, trusted and genuinely connected to the people they work beside, that comes with them.

But so does resentment.

So does tension and walking on eggshells. Feeling unheard. Gossip in the staff room. Competition. Defensiveness. The need to be right. The fear of getting something wrong.

Children may not know the details but they know something…

They feel it in our tone. Our patience. The way we respond to each other. The energy shift when someone walks into the room.

The children can feel your team culture.

Which is why, for the sake of our children, we need to drop our egos.

Apologize when we get it wrong. Have the uncomfortable conversation instead of the convenient conversation about someone.

Let another Educator have the better idea. Ask for help.

✨ Give people the benefit of the doubt.

Remember that being a strong team matters more than being the person who was right. 💕

Team culture isn’t an HR initiative we dust off when morale gets weird. It is part of our pedagogy.

If we want children surrounded by adults who are calm, curious, respectful and connected, then we have a responsibility to create a workplace where our Educators experience those things too.

And we carry that culture outward to our families.

Because the environment surrounding a child is much bigger than the classroom they’re standing in.

At all costs, protect your team culture! ✨culture creates energy & energy is contagious

We will spend 45 minutes moving a shelf three inches to the left because ✨the environment✨. And honestly? Fair.The light...
09/20/2026

We will spend 45 minutes moving a shelf three inches to the left because ✨the environment✨. And honestly? Fair.

The lighting, materials and noise level matters. The way a room flows genuinely, matters.

But there’s one part of the environment we don’t talk about nearly enough.

Us.

Educators, and parents, you’re in this one too, our energy becomes part of the environment our children experience.

Energy is more than whether we’re having a good day or a bad day.

It’s our internal pace. Our attention. Our tension. Our presence. The thoughts and emotions we’re carrying. The feeling we bring into a room before we’ve said a single word.

You can tell a child “take your time” while everything in your body is saying hurry up.

You can sit right beside them while your mind is seventeen places away.

Children notice ✨

They read the smallest shifts in our faces. They hear changes in our voices. They feel when our bodies tense. They know the difference between an adult who is physically beside them and one who is actually present with them.

There is a whole language happening underneath our words and children seem to arrive here already knowing how to speak it.

Somewhere along the way, many of us adults become less sensitive to it. We learn to prioritize what someone says over what we feel happening underneath it.

Children haven’t necessarily learned to do that yet.

This doesn’t mean our children need perfectly calm adults. They should experience us as human. As role models for how to identify our emotions and how to express ourselves respectfully.

The goal isn’t perfect energy. It’s awareness of our energy.

To notice what we’re carrying. To understand how it enters the space. And, when we can, to consciously choose what we contribute to it.

Because sometimes the environment doesn’t need another basket, a prettier shelf or a perfectly curated sensory invitation.

Sometimes we’re the thing that needs adjusting three inches to the left 😉🍃

Somewhere along the way, we got really good at keeping children busy.Activities. Crafts. Circle time. Sensory bins. Invi...
09/18/2026

Somewhere along the way, we got really good at keeping children busy.

Activities. Crafts. Circle time. Sensory bins. Invitations to play. Theme weeks. Special days.

Don’t get me wrong, these are all lovely things and I’m a sucker for a good sensory bin setup.

But sometimes I think we’ve confused providing opportunities with filling time. Children don’t need every quiet moment turned into an activity.

They need time to wander around with absolutely no plan. To pick something up. Put it down. Come back to it 20 minutes later.

To announce that a stick is a fishing rod, then a birthday candle, then apparently someone’s baby.

As adults, we really struggle with this one. A child looks bored and it makes us physically uncomfortable. One of the hardest lessons I carry through each phase of life is “sometimes the hardest thing to do is to do nothing at all”.

At Paragon, we’re actively learning to leave a little more empty space. Because boredom isn’t something we need to fix.

Sometimes it’s just the awkward little pause before a child thinks of something much more interesting than we would have.

Exercise that pause and see what magic our children fill the space with 🍃✨

We are the office assistants of our tiny CEO’s and when it comes to organizing their schedule, less is more.

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Squamish, BC

Opening Hours

Tuesday 7:30am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 7am - 6pm
Thursday 7am - 6pm
Friday 7am - 6pm

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