tiney’s journal is your essential tool for communicating children’s activities and development with their parents. Whether it’s for daily updates like food, sleep, nappies and activities, or for observations and assessments of learning, the journal allows you to record everything all in one place on the tiney app - giving both you and the parent a shared record of the child’s exciting journey of development at your tiney home.

You can use the Journal to share everything about a child’s day. While making EYFS observations regularly is statutory, sharing other updates in the journal is optional - but recommended.

📸 Snapshot - Record children learning new things and having fun!

Parents love to see their children having fun in your tiney home, especially as they’re settling in! Capture a snapshot of children’s activities during the day by taking a quick photo/video of the moment and a description. Why not take a photo and send it in the moment, or save it to your drafts to add a quick description later.

📕 EYFS Observations

Capture a photo and a description to explain to the parent what the child is doing and what they are learning. Add the EYFS learning areas which they are working on, and your suggestion around what further extensions could support their learning - and how this will inform your planning.

Examples of what you can observe

Achievements; what the child did well for the first time
Behaviour; how they react in different situations
Communication; what kinds of communications are used or not used (eg. speech, gestures, head movements, facial expressions and eye contact)
Concentration; how engaged is the child in the activity?
Environment; which environment is the child most comfortable or confident in? (this may be inside, outside or a particular part of your setting)
Help; if the child needs help from an adult or other children
Persistence; does the child concentrate and work things out or stop to do something easier (links to Characteristics of effective learning ‘having a go’)

🍽 Meals - Update parents on food consumption

Share updates on what your children have eaten each day, so both you and the parent can keep track of their eating habits, preferences and ensuring a varied diet between your tiney home and their own. You can record a description of the food, for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner, and how much of the food they ate. For milk, you can enter the exact amount in oz or ml.

📹 Video - Share short clips with parents

When you post a Snapshot, EYFS Observation or Meal, you can now include a short 60 second clip. Parents will get notified and be able to watch clips inside the app.

👶 Nappies - Update parents on nappy changes

You can use the journal to share updates on your children’s nappies throughout the day. Easily record the time of the nappy change, and whether it was wet, soiled, wet and soiled, had a rash and if you applied cream.

💤 Sleep - Update parents on nap times

Share updates on their sleeping patterns so both you and the parent know their routine and are aware of what happens during their sleep, and whether they’ve had enough sleep. You can record the time that each nap happens.

🎚 Filters - Find specific posts and observations

Our post filters let you find specific posts in different learning areas. Quickly find EYFS Observations tagged with specific learning areas for a child.

📝 Drafts - Pick up where you left off

Writing a long post? You can save posts to your drafts and come back to it later! Simple select “Save to Drafts” when exiting any post and it’ll be available later. To access simply select Drafts when creating a new post.

FAQs

👪 What do parents see?

When parents open the app, they’ll be able to see the list of journal entries exactly as you see them. Parents can tap on any photos to make them bigger and zoom in to get a closer look.