Family Day Care Diaries Purchasing GuideUpdated 3 days ago
What is the difference between all the Family Day Care Diaries?
The Family Day Care Diaries have been developed over time to meet the needs of different educators and schemes.
The original Family Day Care Diary has combined with the Compliance Checklist diary for a more detailed checklist every day to make sure most compliances are being covered on a daily basis, eg. Health and Safety, Sleep times and checks, Nappies and toileting, UV ratings, and Meals. For some of the things that are not covered, we developed our duplicate books. The ultimate compliance tools are this Checklist Diary along with the FDC Compliance Books to be completely covered for compliance. We have also introduced the FDC Combined Compliance Checklist and Programming Diary for an all-in-one compliance and programming tool. This includes both the compliance checklist day pages and monthly EYLF and MTOP programming and reflection spreads.
For weekly programming and reflection, we developed our Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary (except QLD Kindy Program). These are designed for the educator to professionalise, yet simplify your workload, and your ‘Creative Thinking Program’ can be displayed each day, either as it unfolds or it can be used to pre-plan your week along with your daily visual displays for parents. With your Weekly Programs and Reflections on open spreads, it enables you to open this book at any time and view each week at a glance and follow up on future programs using your notes. Educators will often purchase this diary along with one of the compliance diaries together. For your Outdoor Program, use the Central Outdoor Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary. Both the Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary and the Central Outdoor Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary are suitable for children aged 0-5 years following the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF). For school aged children, 5 and over, choose the OSHC Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary with My Time, Our Place Framework (MTOP) or the FDC Combined Compliance Checklist and Programming Diary with both EYLF and MTOP.
To support you in applying and recording sustainable practices, we have the Our Sustainable Year Wall Calendar. The Culturally Responsive Year Calendar has been designed to meet the discussion notes in the 2021 NQF ALF Update. The recent review focused on Approved Learning Frameworks and highlighted changes to strengthen the connection between Learning Frameworks and the National Quality Standard in Indigenous ways of being, knowing, and doing and moving from cultural competence to cultural responsiveness.
To help you capture and record Individual Observations, our Individual Observations Duplicate Book works in conjunction with the Weekly Programming and Reflection Diaries and provides duplicate pages, so your records are filed where they need to be. We also have a My Amazing Year - Portfolio Learning Journal for Children to help you capture their progress throughout the year.
Not to be forgotten are the FDC Co-ordinators whose busy schedule of home visits, approvals, and professional development of educators must be documented as well. For this, we created the Family Day Care Co-ordinator Diary, the Excursion Evaluation and Approval Duplicate book, and the Visitor Sign-In Duplicate Book.
We also have a diary for the Educational Leader role.
What is the purpose of the duplicate books?
The duplicate and triplicate books have been developed with the educator, the scheme, and the families in mind. They are designed to cut down paperwork, photocopying, and emailing while ensuring that the relevant records and copies of these records are kept and held in the appropriate areas as required by the Regulations and the Law. We developed separate books with enough room and sets of duplicates to cover all of the requirements for up to a year in most cases.
They are designed to cover the regulations and the law for each of the areas that the educator is required to document. We identified these as:
Weekly Attendance and Sign-in Duplicate Book (50 sets)
Administration of Medication Record Triplicate Book (20 sets)
Incident, Injury, Trauma and Illness Record Triplicate Book (20 sets)
FDC Weekly Attendance and Sign-In Duplicate Book
Transportation Log Duplicate Book
And for the FDC Co-ordinator:
Family Day Care Co-ordinator Excursion Evaluation and Approval Duplicate Book A4 (20 sets).
Visitor Sign-In Duplicate Book Book A4 (20 sets).
Do I need to buy both the FDC Compliance Diary and the Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary?
Many educators do as the Compliance Diaries (Compliance Checklist Diary) covers the business side of things, and the Weekly Programming and Reflection Diaries cover the educational side of compliance.
A basic program can be recorded in the Compliance Diary if needed.
We also have the FDC Combined Compliance Checklist and Programming Diary that includes daily compliance pages and a monthly program and reflection that includes the EYLF and MTOP Framework.
What if I prefer weekly programming but want the Combined Compliance and Programming Diary?
Educators that prefer to capture weekly programs can do so by pairing the FDC Combined Compliance Checklist and Programming Diary with the Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary.
"Educators [can] plan for the month and then use the weekly planner, linking and extending from that monthly plan! I love this! Our educators will be able to follow the planning cycle well! That’s going to be a big help!"
The monthly program in the FDC Combined Compliance Checklist and Programming Diary can act as an overview of the learning you'd like to achieve, while any emerging changes, interests, observations, or goals that occur can be captured in the Weekly Programming and Reflection Diary.
This Diary is an all-in-one programming, reflection and compliance tool and is not required to be paired with the Weekly Programming Diary, this is a personal preference.
Another suggestion from an FDC Educator was using the Family Communication/Notes/Activities section on the daily compliance pages in the FDC Combined Compliance Checklist and Programming Diary to note focus children.
"The monthly layout of the program is so much better. I can see the family communication/notes/activities section [as] a place to note which children are being focused on for that day with the specific activities."
Many educators have different ways of doing their record keeping and programming, it all depends on what you or your scheme already have in place and what your priorities are.