What are your educators doing at any given time?

The Story of Cinderellas

Cinderellas is a magical long day care service that had two incredible people working there together for the past 30 years. These two women were so in tune with each other few words were needed as they did this magical dance in the rooms and outdoors with each other. They knew exactly what to do to make a day flow. If one did a task, for example ran grouptime, the other set the room up for the next experience. This magical teamwork flowed because they both knew exactly what was needed when working with the children. When a little mishap occurred, which it always will with children, the flow continued with the issue easily resolved. Each educator could step in and do the other’s job when required – no asking or directing. They just knew what was required, could sense all problems and solve them before they even occurred. One time a child was doing something they weren’t supposed to. Facing the opposite direction the educator, without looking up from wiping the tables, redirected the child who was about to climb the bookshelf to a more appropriate area. The child looked amazed as the educator appeared to have eyes in the back of her head.

Managing Educators’ Time to achieve positive outcomes

Unfortunately, Cinderellas doesn’t exist in most services, especially with our high staff turnover.  Don’t panic – a proper run sheet for the room can make any service a Cinderellas. While a routine is a broad-brush stroke of the day, a run sheet breaks the routine down and assigns jobs to specific educators to ensure the routine is completed. Please note strict routines with exact times like this are not needed for everyone or every room. However, walking into a room where it is complete chaos because no educator knows what to do indicates the room requires a run sheet.

See below Emma’s run sheet that she needed to create for her room.