The childcare industry faced a major setback once as the result of COVID-19 taking over the world. Daycare and preschool owners struggled to figure out ways to still be able to provide care to children and help out families while ensuring the health of both students and staff was safeguarded.
Many centers were left with no other choice but to shut down as they found themselves in a tough spot trying and keeping their business afloat. However, others adjusted and adapted to the new circumstances. This is where remote learning came in.
Remote learning brought education to every kid’s doorstep, ensuring that no matter what – the learning went on. Many institutions stayed committed to providing the best care and learning experiences for their students. They made this possible with the help of tools that enabled them to digitise their classrooms.
There was fright, there was a struggle, but in the end, there was spectacular diligence shown by businesses across the world. Much like several educational institutions, we wanted to step it up and empower our clients to do what they’re best at – providing children with top-notch care and education. Let’s dive into how our childcare management software can help you digitise the learning process.
How to start an early childhood education learning program
Lesson sharing: Share lesson plans with parents at a click of a button. You can create and send either each day’s lesson plans or weekly lesson plans with the platform. Parents get notified once the lessons are shared with them, hence, helping them stay on top of what their kid is learning at their preschool. Illumine makes keeping parents looped about their kid’s curriculum in a remote learning setup much easier and simpler
Teachers can make the lesson plans more insightful by attaching videos to the lessons. They can also design weekly lesson plans with well-defined objectives and milestones, hence charting out a clear path of growth for the students.
Assessments: Illumine helps you make evaluations simple at your center. Observe and record milestones, track student’s progress, and generate detailed developmental reports for each child. You can easily access any student’s historical progress with the help of the childcare app. This helps you have all the information in hand you need to help support a child’s growth. Additionally, you can make the assessment reports generated with Illumine interactive and much more insightful by integrating images and notes in them. Illumine’s preschool assessment tool is also compatible with various curriculum frameworks including Montessori, Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework (EYFS), and other country-specific frameworks.
Attendance: Illumine makes the attendance process simplified for you even when you’re recording it virtually. With attendance being recorded in real-time, you can track which student has been attending online classes, and who hasn’t. Generate attendance reports in just a few clicks and monitor late check-ins easily with our platform.
Virtual classrooms: Illumine empowers you to make your everyday online classes fun and interactive. Keep children interested even from a distance with features such as whiteboards, live screen sharing, and supporting all documents. Share quizzes, lesson plans, and videos, set up recurring meetings, and send meeting reminders to parents and keep them in the loop with what’s happening effortlessly.
Collaboration with parents: With this online classroom app, you can easily collaborate with parents to assist your students’ growth. Illumine lets you broadcast messages to all parents at once and also lets you interact with them individually through in-app messaging. This way it gets easier for parents to get in touch with you and solve their doubts and queries.
Zoom configured: Illumine is a certified Zoom partner. It has all the internal integrations you need to host meetings online. One just needs to configure their Illumine account with Zoom in order to be able to conduct online classes directly with the app. This means there is no need of installing any external software.
Tips for managing distance learning
Providing parents assistance
With offices going to work from home set up, many parents are struggling with balancing their office work and home chores. With kids being at home all day and parents working, it could get difficult for them to figure out a way to keep their children busy and distracted. Additionally, they also want to ensure that the pandemic is not an obstacle in their child’s growth and learning journey.
Thus, they need your support more than ever now. You need to step up your game to make sure your services are relevant, helpful, and effective even from a distance. It is important to chart a teaching plan and keep parents informed about it, so they can plan their days accordingly.
Illumine’s lesson planning feature is cut out for exactly this. Plan lessons for a week in advance and share them with parents for them to be able to manage time between working and offering their kids the support they need.
Digitize your services
Even though the kids are not physically with you at your center, you still need to ensure you are providing holistic care and support. In order to gain parent’s trust, it becomes crucial for you to show them that even in the given circumstances you can still continue to do what you do best – providing children with quality care.
Illumine’s childcare management platform lets you take all your services online. From billing parents to collecting payments, sharing activity schedules, meal plans, and progress reports, to marking attendance – you can do it all from the app. Thus ensuring that kids are not missing out on any meaningful experiences.
Be critical with your observations
Since the kids are not physically present with you, staying informed on their day-to-day activities becomes crucial for you to understand and record their growth. Ask parents to document and submit pictures and videos of children while they play and explore. Be on the lookout for any trends and patterns in this documentation, make a note of it, and plan the coming activities accordingly. Illumine’s assessment tool lets you record progress efficiently and also lets you generate detailed progress reports to share with parents and keep them on board with their child’s development.
Providing alternatives to screen time
Children aged between 2 to 7 are still in the preoperational stage, thus expecting them to learn completely through screens is developmentally incorrect. Therefore, make sure that you are encouraging the kids to engage in playtime by interacting with their environment and the resources available to them at home. Create a survey and ask parents to fill it in to better understand the resource availability and then plan your activities around it.
Communicate effectively with parents
Establishing a strong relationship with parents is the key to them being able to completely trust and support you. It is important that you hear what they have to say to you. Connect with families every once a week to get their inputs and their feedback.
Send emailers to notify them about any updates or changes in curriculum or activities. With Illumine’s childcare management software, you can create and send emailers to parents easily. Choose from an existing template or make your own with the drag and drop option.
Be considerate
Families are great partners, and they can help you by extending teaching. However, families have responsibilities beyond just assisting teachers in education. Make virtual meetings optional, and if a family skips one or fails to finish a task, send a note to check-in and share what was missed, but don’t make them mandatory.
Back yourself
Ever since Covid-19 took over the world, previous success indicators are no longer valid in a lot of ways when it comes to teaching children. Participation and smiles are good indicators of your achievement. If youngsters seem bored during a virtual meeting, keep in mind that they are young and everything is new to them. Also, don’t take hasty exits personally. If general attendance is declining, contact or survey families to learn what they require and do your best to accommodate them.
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