Little Diggers provides quality care to defence families in Moorebank NSW. Little Diggers is a vibrant and welcoming 2 room service that caters to 45 children daily, with 14 staff members on site.

The educators at Little Diggers are committed to delivering a high level of service. They recognise the importance of being, becoming and belonging and these principles are implemented into their program daily.

“Prior to using Storypark, we used paper portfolios. Parents would only see the learning stories completed for their children at the end of the year when they were handed out. We also displayed examples of children’s learning in our rooms and encouraged parents to look at it, but struggled to gain input and feedback. Storypark allows us to communicate directly with families; and allows families to see their child’s interactions, learning and development in real time during their day.

Our families at Little Diggers tell us that they love using Storypark. Parents look forward to receiving updates about their children’s learning throughout the day. Some contribute by posting about their child’s weekend and uploading their child’s profile picture.

The older children absolutely love viewing their stories on Storypark. They are excited to bring things in from home so we can take photographs and add it to their profiles. The involvement from staff, children and families has been a very positive experience.

Our educators complete their programming and share learning stories through Storypark for families to view. Storypark’s format is very easy to use allowing educators to select pre-populated learning outcomes (as tags), which saves a lot of time and writing!

Educators are excited to share children’s learning with families on Storypark and are valuing the responses received from parents. This provides a more rich learning experience and deeply involves the parents in the learning and development of their child.

Implementing Storypark has positively impacted all of our families. Prior to using Storypark, we struggled with parent involvement/communication. But now, the amount of parents communicating and adding their own stories/posts has amazed us! We have been able to incorporate our families’ contributions to our program and extend the learning opportunities (e.g. weekend experiences). The positive feedback we have received has been phenomenal.

The fact that our parents can see what their child is doing, and be involved in their learning whilst they are away or on deployment is an achievement in itself. In addition, grandparents and extended family living in other states can now also be informed and involved. As educators, we feel privileged to be able to do this.

Storypark has had a massive effect on Little Diggers. Our educators are more involved with parents and communication is more effectively meeting the needs of families. Families love the regular updates on their children’s profiles and appreciate being able to see what is happening day to day at our centre. Having only implemented Storypark in January, we can say that the results and benefits have been amazing.

We would definitely encourage other learning services to use it, it is a great program that is easy to navigate and it is effective!”

 

Posted by Sonya McIntyre

Sonya was born in Lower Hutt and went to Rata Street Kindergarten and Petone Kindergarten. A qualified ECE, she studied at Victoria University in Wellington and has worked with home-based educators, in community-based childcare and in kindergarten. With childhood memories of reading books and writing stories, combined with her passion for all things social media, Sonya segued into her role with us at Storypark as social media manager.


Try Storypark for free and improve family engagement with children’s learning


Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *