Most states and provinces across North America have both frameworks and quality rating guidelines for centers to ensure quality education is provided to children in child care. However, for an administrator of a preschool that is already juggling everything else that needs to get done, maintaining alignment to these programs can be tricky.
The HiMama app helps centers align to state frameworks much more easily in their lesson planning and teacher daily observations, and helps to graduate centers to higher quality ratings through increased parent engagement and program quality.
State Frameworks
Frameworks provide guidelines for curriculum used in specific states or provinces that ensure learning experiences in child care are varied, holistic, and align with what is known from early childhood development research to be important for positive child outcomes. While every state or province has a slightly different framework, many of these guidelines follow similar principles (see our article on the PILES developmental domains to see one particular example).
In practice, teachers must ensure that activities included in their lesson plans incorporate skills, domains and indicators as outlined in their state or provincial framework. In addition, as part of a teacher’s pedagogical documentation practice, it is ideal to keep track of individual children’s participation and learnings using these skills, domains and indicators, and share this progress with families. Not only can this take a lot of memorization and flipping through manuals, it can be incredibly time consuming to do correctly!
See for yourself how HiMama includes frameworks as we create a lesson plan, add an activity for a child, and see that activity populated on the child’s Development Assessment profile:
Quality Rating Systems
As educators certainly know, a child’s early education is crucial to his/her personal development and future academic success. Quality rating guidelines, which are typically administered at the state or provincial level, set requirements for early childhood educators to promote the most effective and beneficial learning environment in a safe and positive setting for children.
Often, quality rating guidelines have varying levels or grades to gauge center performance. Each level typically builds on the next, promoting additional practices that are proven to increase positive child outcomes. As families are usually able to search for centers based on quality rating, a higher quality rating is beneficial to increase enrollment and overall family satisfaction.
🌟 Here is how we can help: Every quality rating system is different, but there are several factors that are almost always included in the ratings criteria. HiMama helps centers increase their score in these 4 major areas:
- Staff Qualifications & Professional Development: HiMama provides professional growth and development activities, through numerous HiMama resources, including weekly blog articles, weekly podcasts for leaders in early childhood education, white papers and reports, as well as free sponsored webinars by top industry leaders
- Early Learning Program Quality: All 60+ state and provincial frameworks are accessible for child care and early learning programs directly through the HiMama app, enabling assistance with lesson planning, developmental observations, online portfolios and development reports
- Leadership & Management: Components of staff performance can be evaluated through the HiMama app, including classroom documentation quality and interactions with families
- Partnerships with Family & Community: HiMama enables early childhood programs to connect parents with the classroom by inviting them to participate in children’s experiences and in turn build all around trusting partnerships. Parents receive individual updates and reports about their child’s experience and development in the early childhood program, including assessments to reflect on a child’s readiness for transitions to new programs or into school age programs
Want to learn more on how HiMama can help centers meet their goals? Book a tour with one of our early childhood specialists to try the program for yourself!
