About Us
Learning Journals started life in 2012 at Arbor Green Nursery in Edinburgh. We were frustrated with how long it would take us to create high quality observations of learning that we could share with parents. It was painful and expensive!
Created by childcare professionals at a leading nursery, our passion at Learning Journals is to help practitioners, teachers and staff to raise the standard of education and to simplify how parents engage with their child’s learning at nursery and school.
Obsesrvations Made Easy
Learning Journals makes it easy for your team to record observations.
Quickly and easily create high quality, in-depth observations to document a child's learning, all linked to any learning framework or curriculum you want.
Share and Engage
With Learning Journals, it’s easier than ever to share and engage with parents.
Immediately share your observations with parents, giving them a huge sense of pride and ownership over their child’s learning.
Track and Monitor
Learning Journals gives you the ability to track and monitor a child’s progress.
With no additional effort you can quickly see progress in learning, ability and coverage over many curricula. You can use frameworks at individual child level or as part of a group.
A Short Message From David, Owner Of Learning Journals
We are a small team – we grew out of a small family nursery in Edinburgh and I continue to passionately believe that by remaining a small and flexible company that puts the experience of children and staff at the very front of our minds is the key that sets us apart from larger companies who are slaves to shareholders, boards and their bottom line. That’s just not me 🙂
You can still get me on the phone if you want to talk (0131 212 5500, by the way) and if I can I’ll do my best to come and see you if you’d rather talk face to face.
We’ve used our excellent reputation and word of mouth to spread from our little corner of Edinburgh to having customers all over the world.
Every single customer means the world to me and because we don’t have gigantic marketing budgets we know we must work extra hard for our users. When I’m not visiting nurseries I’m still available at the end of our customer service line for those that need help, advice or just a chat.
David Clark
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Contact Us
Who We Help
Owners
We originally designed Learning Journals to remove the need for the awful and time-consuming process of creating observations on paper - printing out photos, sticking them in jotters... Yuck!
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Staff
Using Learning Journals means that practitioners can create beautiful, engaging and informative observations that connect to many different curricula and frameworks from around the world.
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Parents
Very quickly we discovered that Learning Journals is extremely valuable parents. It lets them have a little window into a world that is so often obscured to them. By having access to observations like never before parents are kept more informed, more engaged and more invested in their connection with the nursery or school.
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Childminders
Childminders are a massively important part of the early years chain. Not every family wants, or can afford, to send their child to a private nursery. Local authority nurseries don’t always provide the flexibility that a busy family or parent needs. In thousands of cases childminders are the glue that keeps early years services together.
What Our Clients Say
Staff View – Fox Covert Early Years
Carol Thabet, early years officer at Fox Covert Early Years explains how Learning Journals has benefitted the staff and parents at their nursery in Edinburgh.
- How parents benefit from easy access
- How staff can note significant learning
- How everyone is on the same page with support and learning
"It's really, really made a big difference to families".
Manager View – Flying Colours Nursery
Arran Black, owner of Flying colours nursery goes into detail about how Learning Journals has worked from day one at his nursery.
- How parents have embraced the system
- Surprised how easily parents have taken to interacting with the system
- We've not looked back
"The person I think it benefits the most is the nursery manager quite simply because they can find everything in one place".
A Parent’s View
Jo Morris, a parent with a child at nursery tells us about how Learning Journals helps to keep her informed. She love's the ease of use, the simple and easy access and how all the information is exactly what she needs to have.
- Really easy to use!
- A very stress free way to share with my partner
- We have a full library of his time at nursery
"Keeps me completely up to date with what he's doing ".
Manager View – Stockbridge Nursery
Caroline Munro is the head of Stockbridge Nursery. Here she talks about how Learning Journals has made a huge impact to her nursery, children and parents.
- How they save so much time and no longer need to take work home
- How observations are now straight to the point with a clear focus
- How the system is so quick, so instant
"Parent's have really engaged....the children are learning at home more now".
Head Teacher View – Stockbridge Primary School
Kathryn Collier is acting head of a primary school. Having used Learning Journals for a couple of years she gives us some insight into how the system benefits pupils and parents from a teacher's perspective.
- How parent contributions help her track wider achievements
- How the system acts as a prompt for conversation in the class
- How it now helps to effectively communicate with parents
"A really nice way of engaging the school, the child and the parent".
Manager View – Waterfront Nursery
Vicki Shiels is the manager of the Waterfront nursery, a very large childcare provider with hundreds of children in their care every day. With so many children to care for Vicki was very keen to have a system that would help save her time while still allowing her to provide the same high quality service as before.
- How we save time and money with Learning Journals
- How children are more involved
- How even staff uncomfortable with technology find the system easy to use
"It's much cheaper!"