In the last article, we talked about the top 7 factors on why a parent choose Early Years Settings and provided some tips on how to retain families and increase enrollment rate.

Essentially it comes down to one factor, communication. Regular communication will support parents participation and increase their understanding of how to support their child’s learning and development outside of the early years setting.

As educators, we spend hours researching good theories/practices, planning, observing, adapting, collaborating, innovating and all for one purpose, to facilitate learning in the children we care for.

Today’s parents live very hectic, busy lives. Balancing jobs, caring for their children and a busy family life. They are constantly bombarded with information on early academic messages by social media, playground bench bragging and commercials. So it is no wonder a parent comes into our settings and states their expectation is for their child to know all their numbers, alphabet and write their name by age 4.

Parents, we believe, want what we all want – the best for their child. But don’t have the time to study and research child development.

This is where we the educators step in. By supporting parents through good communication in many different forms we can put the knowledge and research in their hands and tailor it to their child’s needs.

By engaging parents and supporting them we are in turn supporting the extension of their child’s learning in the home. The impact can be to improve the learning outcomes for children and give them an interest in lifelong learning.

At ChildDiary we have had feedback from our ChildDiary families. We are delighted to hear the positive impact ChildDiary is making on communication between their child’s early years setting and the family:

  • Parents felt that ChildDiary has enabled them to be more involved in their child’s learning
  • Parents felt that ChildDiary is a great way to share daily records so it is always at hand
  • Parents felt ChildDiary has enabled them to gain a greater understanding of their child’s interests and strengths
  • Parents rated ChildDiary as easy to use and support exceptional

ChildDiary’s aim is to increase parental participation and support children as they develop and learn. Educators communicate daily with parents at drop off and pick up times. ChildDiary supports the relationship between the educator and the parents through more regular sharing of information about the child’s care and daily activities via a private and secure platform that is easy to use.

At ChildDiary we have had feedback from our Early Years services on how they are using ChildDiary to support communications with parents. They said they can:

  • easily create and send Newsletters, reminders and updates through our community post tool where parents can be interactive and provide feedback/comments
  • easily share important information with parents such as curriculum plans, yearly calendars and fee policies
  • in a click create and send daily records on sleep, meals, attendance and daily activities.
  • easily capture the emerging interest, needs and learning dispositions of children through beautiful learning stories which are linked to the National Curriculum Frameworks
  • observe children as the learning unfolds through taking photographs and note taking. Simply capture the moment and complete the observation as you go or at a later point through our saving and editing tools. The observations can be sent through to parents for them to comment on if they wish or can be stored privately in the child’s eLearning Portfolio.
  • the trending reports give instant visibility to where a child is at in relation to the learning goals and supports planning for the child’s needs.

The Early Years Services using ChildDiary say ChildDiary is making a difference in their work:

  • ChildDiary has helped improve their teaching practice
  • Educators felt they had more communication with families through using ChildDiary
  • Educators felt they had a greater understanding of the children’s interests and strengths through using ChildDiary
  • Educators said ChildDiary is different because it is so simple to use and really fast to update records which means they have more time to spend interacting with the children

Please contact us if you have feedback or questions. We’re happy to help out one-on-one over the phone, Skype, Hangouts or via email.

Would you like to try ChildDiary? Click here to create your free trial account!