The Daily Dairy allows you to record key information such as register times, what a child ate, when they slept, nappy changes and toileting, which can later be shared with the parents. The names and visibility of the Daily Diary sections can be customised at any time from the Managers Dashboard.
To open a child’s Daily Diary, select a child and click on ‘Daily Diary’.
Note: The Daily Diary is not available offline, therefore it is essential that you are connected to the internet for this functionality to work.
This will load the child’s daily diary sheet for the current day. To change the date, click on the date in the middle at the top and choose the relevant day from the pop up box, then click ‘Set Date’. Alternatively use the arrows to go backwards or forwards a day.
Registry
You can mark a child in or out of the nursery from the Children’s screen using the in/out feature underneath the child’s name/picture. This is particularly useful if you have a member of staff standing at the door welcoming the children as they arrive. To mark a child in, click the in/out under that child’s name then click ‘Yes’ on the confirmation pop up message, the child will then be marked in as per the current time on the tablet.
Once you open the child’s daily diary, under the ‘Registry’ tab you will see any in/out times you have logged from the Children’s screen. Alternatively, you can add the times manually by tapping in the ‘Came in at’ or ‘Left At’ columns and clicking ‘OK’. This also acts as a register for the children at nursery on any day.
Daily diaries also have the functionality to mark children in/out multiple time through a day, for example, if they need to leave to go to an appointment but later come back to nursery. You can mark multiple in and out times manually from the daily diary screen or use the in/out feature on the children’s screen to log this. Their daily diary will then show multiple registry entries for the day.
Daily Logs
The Daily Diary has many sections such as ‘What I Ate today’, ‘Sleep Times’, ‘I had my bottle’, ‘Nappies’ and ‘Toileting’. Select the relevant section from the tabs across the top of the screen to fill in information about the child for that day. Note: Depending on your nursery setting the sections available here may be different.
Additional comments can be added to each of the sections individually by clicking anywhere in the ‘Notes’ area. This could be used to record what the child did/didn’t eat, how well they slept etc.
Media/Observations
You can also add up to five photographs to a child’s daily if you wish to share an activity with parents but do not feel it is worthy of an observation. Under the ‘Media/Observations’ tab, click on ‘Add images’ and choose either ‘Gallery’ or ‘Camera’ to add the relevant picture(s).
The daily diary can be repeatedly saved and edited throughout the day. At the end of the day, mark the child out from the Children’s screen or click on ‘Left at’ to record when the child was picked up and select ‘OK’. Once the daily diary is complete click ‘Publish’.
Note: Once a daily dairy has been published for a child on that day it can no longer be edited.
Additional Notes
The daily diary also has a ‘Notes from Parents’ and a ‘Notes to Parents’ section. Parents can start a daily diary by adding some notes from home which will be shown in the ‘Notes from Parents’ section on the child’s daily diary. When a parent adds a note, a notification will be sent to the tablet for the child’s key person, who can then continue to complete the daily dairy during the day.
Note: Staff members can also add comments to the ‘Notes from Parents’ section for instances where the parent communicates information verbally.
The ‘Notes to Parents’ section can similarly be used to communicate back to the parent and will be visible to the parent once the daily diary is published.
Group Daily Diaries
For a guide to adding daily diary information for a group of children, please see ‘Using Group Daily Diaries’.