Modern childcare organizations need a parent-teacher communication app. These apps aid in parent-teacher communication in a variety of ways including instant messaging, daily recaps and developmental milestone tracking.
A weekly or monthly email newsletter to parents serves a certain communication need. But in the world of instant Tweets, smartphone notifications for every bank deposit and simple chat to reach customer service for that broken microwave, email simply isn’t fast enough.
7 Daycare App Benefits
Unsure whether your childcare truly needs a parent-teacher communication app to communicate with parents? Read up on these 7 impactful benefits of improving communication with parents using digital tools.
1. Delight Parents and Meet Their Expectations
With so much digitization and convenience, parents expect communication with their child’s caregivers and teachers to be just as simple. The easier it is for parents to use your daycare app, the more you’ll delight them. Putting all important school information at their fingertips will make interacting with teachers and administrators feel less of a chore and more like staying in touch with a good friend.
2. Teachers and Administrators Learn About Parent Issues
When you stay in touch with parents constantly, they’re more likely to open up about concerns about their child’s schooling or their experience with your center. That way, you can solve those issues before parents start looking elsewhere for childcare services. Hearing and resolving issues before they become big problems is one more way you can keep delighting parents.
3. Daily Summary Transitions Care Seamlessly
Daycare apps provide a daily summary once a parent picks up their child. This includes basic information, such as when a child last ate and what they had. But it also includes more in-depth insights as to the child’s day and what they did. These recaps help transition care back to parents, who can talk to the child about their day and reinforce their learnings.
4. Improved Child Development Outcomes
Parent-teacher communication helps create inviting, engaging learning environments for children. And because teachers update parents on activities children are doing in the classroom, parents can bring those activities home too and reinforce that learning. Sharing in caring for and educating children helps create a positive learning environment where children thrive and develop.
5. Accept Parent Feedback to Adapt Programs
Some parent feedback is less about a child’s specific education experience and more about areas of improvement that parents see. Because teachers and administrators live the day-to-day operations of a center, they can miss the little things that might make an experience more enjoyable or easier for parents. With open lines of communication, you’re more likely to hear about those little things so you can resolve them. Or, you might hear about the great aspects of your school that you can use for marketing purposes to keep enrollment full.
6. School Correspondence is Timely
Parents will get a chance to read that reminder about tomorrow’s show and tell day with ample time to prepare their student and pack the necessary materials. Email, word-of-mouth and other communication forms simply won’t work for this type of communication.
7. Improved Parent-Teacher Relationships
Building relationships with teachers when parents only have a few minutes at drop-off and pickup to talk to teachers is challenging. Not only that, but 20 to 30 other parents are vying for that same time and attention from the teacher. Allowing for digital communication that works the same way as social media or messaging apps helps parents feel connected to their child’s teacher to improve relationships.
Daycare App for Childcare Centers, Preschools and Other Early Childhood Education Centers
Adding a daycare app to your childcare center’s tools will also help your team save time. You won’t have to worry about maintaining multiple communication tools and feeling overwhelmed with parent questions during pickup and drop off. Keeping communication open will have enormous impacts on your relationship with parents, time spent communicating and the ability for teachers to focus on teaching.
iCare Software subscriptions include the free parent app, which allows parents to keep their child’s information up to date while communicating with teachers regularly and enrolling their child in new programs. See the impact this app and the iCare tools could have on your parent-teacher communication by scheduling a demo.