Sharing children’s care routines with family
The importance of sharing children’s care routines Let’s talk about children’s care routines. A key component of working effectively with children and their families is the exchange of information and communication which is essential for you to truly work in partnership together. Over time you have no doubt found strategies and ways to share with each other by: Sharing learning...
Building Trusting Relationships with Families
Building Trusting Relationships with Families 2020 and 2021 have presented us with many challenges, due to Covid-19. Although each of our challenges have been unique to our learning communities, there are some that are faced by many learning services all over the world. We caught up with Nicola and Dan from The Learning Enrichment Foundation in Toronto, to hear about...
The Importance of Family within the Early Learning Environment
Located in the Ottawa Valley, Petawawa, Ontario is home to Garrison Petawawa, one of Canada’s largest and busiest military bases. The Petawawa Military Family Resource Centre (PMFRC) provides a wide-range of programs and services for the families of Canadian Armed Forces members, including several full and part-time child care programs. Our early childhood educators work hard to support military families...
North America’s First Independent Assessment on the Impact of Digital Documentation in Full-day Kindergarten
The use of digital documentation in early childhood programs is becoming more and more commonplace throughout Canada and the U.S. Many of these platforms talk about the benefits that they offer, but until recently, no known studies had been published on the impact of digital documentation in the early learning context in North America. Moreover, when I reviewed the...
Settling children back into your learning service after lockdown
Settling back into your learning service Having a strategy and procedures in place for transitioning children (and their families) back into your learning environment is of utmost importance right now. Many children will be straight back to business as if they had never been away. They may have had a great time, living their best lives at home in their...
Making teaching visible
We talk a lot about how documentation makes children’s learning visible and the importance of this, but have you ever stopped to consider what else is made visible? It makes teaching visible too! As teachers, it seems to be a common feeling that parts of the work we do with children are not recognized. That is not to say that...
The Power of Storypark at Family Day
Children, families, and educators are reaping the benefits of a new communications tool in our child care centres. With the goal of increasing engagement with our educators and families, Family Day began implementing a new communications tool in our child care centres in 2017. Called Storypark, the tool is an innovative, internet-based platform that is used to document children’s learning...
Documenting Professional Growth in ECE
Documenting professional growth in ECE Documenting professional growth in ECE is an essential element and indicator, of quality practice. But finding the right system for collecting examples of your learning, relating this evidence to your work with children, reflecting on and using your learning to enhance your practice can be challenging to say the least. In the central North Island...
How Storypark benefits our practice and operations
Written by Kim Hiscott, Executive Director, Andrew Fleck Children’s Services We’ve always been committed to engaging with families to share their child’s early learning experience; we do this through daily interactions but also through purposeful documentation. Our “traditional” approach included educators spending hours creating amazing portfolios that while appreciated by parents for the most part, by the time they were...
Educator Portfolios – Nurture the Growth of Your Team
With so many administrative tasks to do, you find that working on your professional growth, development, and appraisal sometimes has to wait. Good things take time. It is challenging to find an effective system of gathering evidence of your progress, linking it to professional requirements, connecting it to your practice, and reflecting on it as well. If only there was...