Learning Journals
About Learning Journals
We are childcare professionals too - we know that every second that you aren't spending with the children is a second of their education wasted.
Our goal is to help the hardworking teams in nurseries and schools like yours easily and quickly create meaningful and personal observations of children's significant learning. We want the parents of these children to be able to view and comment on these observations so that they feel engaged with their profiles - which also gives you fantastic evidence of a close relationship between the nursery/school and home.
Easily create observations
In just a couple of minutes you can create a high quality, in depth observation documenting a child's learning.
Share and engage with parents
Being able to immediately share these observations with parents gives them a huge sense of pride and ownership over their child's learning.
Track and monitor progress
With no additional effort, you can quickly see progress in learning, ability and coverage over many curricula and frameworks at individual child level or as part of a group.
Request a Demo
Experience a live demo, get answers to your specific questions, and find out why Learning Journals is the right choice for your nursery.
Find Out MoreGet Your Free Trial
You'll have 30 days to see how our super simple system can help your team and engage your parents.
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Unlimited Storage
You don't have to worry about storage before capturing photos and videos of significant points of learning, or just sharing a nice moment with parents. We don't limit you on how many observations you can upload and your price won't increase - so feel free to go nuts!
Unrivalled Home Learning Features
During the lockdown period of 2020 we were shown how important a strong link between nursery/school and the home is. But it's more than than that, parents have to be able to easily contribute and communicate back. Our parent contribution features allow parents to take observations from home and share them with school.
Customisable content - any framework you like
EYFS? Curriculum For Excellence? SHANARRI? Something bespoke from your local authority? Whatever learning framework you use we likely have it already in our system available for you to create observations. If we don't, we'll add it for you. Our flexible system can be tailored to your needs.
Group observations - save huge amounts of time
Let's say you're taking an observation of a group of children taking part in an activity together. The observations for each of these children will likely be broadly the same. You don't necessarily want to have to create an individual observation for each child. Creating a group observation with Learning Journals is simple - and if you want to you can go back and personalise each child's observation further.
Tracking and monitoring - evidence of progress
As you create observations with Learning Journals you are automatically building up a picture of development and progress. You can call on this to help you make informed decisions about an individual child or group of children.
Historical tracking - show development
As well as the detailed tracking and monitoring mentioned above, you can compare and individual child or group of children historically. Want to see how coverage of a particular area of the curriculum compares to the same children last year? No problem! Want to see if you've made any progress for a group of children in numeracy and maths in the last 6 months? Simple!
Parental contributions - strengthen your links to home
You are able to create parent contribution sections so that parents can upload their own mini observations from home. Title these sections anything you want: Achievements From Home, Star Moments etc. Whatever works for your nursery or school.
Children with no observations
Each week you and the team will receive an email to let you know which children haven't had an observation recorded within your set minimum period. This keeps you informed and aware of any children that might have been overlooked, allowing you to take action.
Daily diaries
As well as creating observation you can use your Learning Journals system to complete daily diaries for the children. Record activities they've taken part in, nappy changes, sleeps or any meals they've had. All included at no extra cost.
Ad-hoc reporting
Create your own reports. You might want an end of term summary, or it could be transition report you need. Upload your own templates or create dynamic forms. Reports can also be shared with parents through the system so they can be kept informed before things like parent consultations.
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.
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Our Products
OP&L
Let’s put the joy back into observing children! OP&L reduces paperwork and the need for collecting evidence. This give you time to spend interacting and playing with your children, not testing them.
Learning Journals HR
This add on to your existing Learning Journals account takes away the huge headache that senior team members and owners face when trying to build, manage and develop a staff team.
Learning Journals Finance Old
Learning Journals finance is coming soon!