6 Ways to Get More Time with Children in Your Centre

If you are like most people that work in Child Care, you have chosen this field because of your love of children. The majority of people that work as Child Care educators or facilitators did not want to do administration or computer work all day, yet they find themselves doing just that.

Many educators find that the admin side of Child Care can really chip away at their day. Child Care workers are missing out on spending quality time with the children and often are overwhelmed with administration – working longer hours and / or taking work home.

Our checklists shows 6 ways that you can cut down on paperwork and spend more time working with the little ones and on growing your early learning centre.

1. Organisation

Organise your Child Care programs with software. Use a program that allows you to add in events and activities on the fly and schedule in planned project work and recurring activities.

2. Communication

Communicate well with staff. Ensure that you and your team are on the same page about scheduling, games, learning activities, play, reporting and regulations at your early learning centre or Kindergarden.

Open and consistent communication with parents and families is really important too. It makes for good rapport. The families need to know about any upcoming changes in your kindergarten, and how these will impact the children. They want to know that their children are having fun and that they are learning at a speed that is appropriate to them, their age, and their capabilities.

3. Computer Skills

Reporting, staff rosters, electronic newsletters, online parent and staff feedback, and creating online stories of children’s activities can really save you time when computerised. Updating your computer skills can allow you to more easily automate tasks and become much more efficient in the office – which leaves you more time to spend with the children. And that’s good for everyone!

4. Data Security

Ensure that your computer systems are backed up regularly so that you do not lose data. Failure to back up your system correctly can result in hours, or even days of re-work and admin time. If you have a cloud based system such as Kindyhub, backups are automatically done for you. Your data is safe, and you save time.

5. Staff Training

As well as computer training, ensure that you and your team are up to date with admin and organisational procedures. If you or other staff are on holiday or sick leave, another staff member should easily be able to step in and fill the void. This relates not only to administration but to cleaning, organisation of supplies, group activities and more.

Having staff cross trained means that day to day procedures are always covered and when you or the other team members return from leave there is less catching up to do! You can get straight back into routine and spending times doing planning and doing fun activities with the children.

6. Capture Experiences as they Happen

Capture photos of the children at play and doing activities at the centre to share with families. A computerised system is best for this.

You can capture on the fly, which makes for easy and fast communication with families. Kindyhub keeps individual captures private to parents and group captures available for that particular class to view in reports.

The Kindyhub app allows you to communicate effectively with families, run reports quickly, and create visual stories of the children’s progress. Parents can log in and give feedback, any incidents are easily recorded, and you can create and share centre community events with families via the Parent App.

Using Kindyhub allows you to streamline your administration and management duties, giving you more time to do what you love – spending time with the children. Contact us for a demonstration or download a trial today.