How to Organize Documentation in a Daycare: Children’s Development

As a child care provider, your main task is to keep children safe, fed, and happy. But you’re also spending your days playing, creating activities, reading stories, and teaching the social, emotional, and educational skills that children will need as they grow. Parents love that you put so much effort into this area of their child’s life, but how can you document and share the growth you see every day? And how can you do this in an organized, virtual fashion to avoid having more clutter in your daycare space?

Below, we’ll share a few simple ways to organize documentation of daycare child development online.

Tip #1: Have an Online Library for Photos and Videos

Even when your days are busy, you likely have time to take a quick picture. If you see a worksheet that a child has written on, take a picture and compare a similar learning experience in a few months. Save these photos in an online library with separate albums for each student. Bring the albums up on your computer or tablet when it’s time for conferences or other parent conversations.

Tip #2: Record Important Tasks or Projects

Pictures are great, but videos can capture a child’s growth in a more concrete fashion. For example. You could record a child coloring or tracing letters. In a few months, record them doing the same thing to show how their pencil grip has improved.

Store these videos in the same online library to make sure you can pull them up and compare them to earlier videos. This will also help you to sort videos by child.

Tip #3: Save Assessment Data in a Digitally

For older toddlers and preschoolers, play-based assessments can be incredible tools. You can often find these for free online. They typically track children’s learning surrounding colors, letters, numbers, and more in a fun, game-like fashion. 

If you don’t have space to save all of the packets and worksheets, consider setting up a simple digital spreadsheet that allows you to check a box when a child masters a new skill. 

For babies, this same format can be used to track important milestones.

If a child scores lower in an area you thought they had mastered, provide extra learning opportunities to strengthen their skills. For example, if you thought they knew all of their colors but had trouble telling a few apart, sing extra songs about colors and sort toys by color a few times per week. 

Before you know it, you’ll be able to log back into your spreadsheet and check the box they originally missed. Share these documents with parents to show the progress their children are making in your care.

Tip #4: Turn to Wonderschool for Support

At Wonderschool, we don’t only help individuals open new family child cares. We also support current providers in all aspects of their business. Our platform allows for easy parent messaging and photo/video sharing, which can be helpful in documenting child development trends. Our community aspect connects you with other providers to share ideas on what works for you as well.

Other features we offer include enrollment management, contactless check-in, parent communications, automated billing, finance management, Spanish language support, and more. 

No matter how you prefer to organize the documentation of daycare child development, Wonderschool is here to assist. Try our services for free today to experience all that we have to offer you as a child care business owner.