STARLIGHTKIDS
Childminding
Parental Communication
Successful communication between parents and myself is vitally important because it also has an effect on your child's development. This is why I encourage a culture of cooperation and continuous communication exchange between childminder and parent through various means. I communicate with parents in numerous ways, including diaries, learning journals, emails, texts, telephone calls and person to person chats. This means I can accommodate everyone, using whichever medium they prefer.
I am happy for parents to call me at home, but I do offer calls in the evenings if they have any pressing issues. The settling in process can mean there may be few more phone calls, but this is normal and it passes once things settle down.
I use email to make any changes clear. I ask parents to email any differences in their routines or any important dates to me so I can make sure I don’t miss anything. This helps to make sure I am flexible as I can rearrange my diary and get back to people quickly. I also use email to send monthly invoices.
Weekly Record
I also communicate in the form of weekly record sheets which include all the meals in a week and all activities we do with the children. (This can only be accessed by the parents of children I care for, using a password, via our Parent login page.)
Learning Journals
We create a folder for children aged 0 months - 5 years which follows the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) structure in the child's development. Along with the weekly record I have photos and samples of work the children produce. This forms the Learning Journals, which we send out to parents regularly. They can see consistent progression from our point of view and they can discuss what the children have done when they are at work, which reinforces all we do with them.
Newsletters
I produce a bi/tri annual newsletter which lets all parents know about general information ranging from topics which we are doing with the children to events that are happening as well as simple notices too. This saves me from repeating myself to everyone over and over again and I won’t forget to tell anyone this way. These can be found on our Newsletter page.
