Families can access our @Home feature in one of two ways. They can 1) navigate to the my.kaymbu.com/home link or 2) download the Kaymbu for Families app.

Introducing @Home

In addition to the Family Guide, it is useful to give families guidance on how they may use @Home. Your recommendations to families will most likely depend on your goals around this feature. If your goal is to engage and stay connected with families, you may start by sending the link and directions on how to start. As families share documentation, teachers can respond, send follow-up activities, or share complementary resources (such as a Storyboard compiling activities from all the children in your room). 

Taking It a Step Further

If you are looking to maintain documentation in particular developmental areas (for upcoming accreditation, to complete your assessments, or to meet state requirements), you may want to provide additional guidance to families. 

Send a particular activity and ask families to upload documentation of their child(ren) engaging in the activity or the output. For example, if you send out an art activity, perhaps a parent or guardian can return a photo of their child painting or of the art their child created. 

You may decide to provide more direction to families, and specifically outline the skills or behaviors they may be observing, as well as ways families can encourage growth at home. A way to approach this could be through the different early childhood developmental areas. You could send parents a message emphasizing that in early childhood, children are learning to recognize, name and control their feelings, as well as learning and valuing the emotions of others. You may prompt families to notice how a child is talking about their emotions, especially what language a child uses and whether they give a reason for the emotion. This context will provide families a clearer picture of what types of conversations and moments they could be documenting at home and what they can be uploading via @Home.  

As educators, you already do so much. @Home and your direction around family documentation provides an opportunity for families to better understand the learning and development play creates. As you become more familiar with and implement Kaymbu@Home, please share your best practices with us! 

Questions you or your families may have!

1. Who can upload a photo for a child?

Only the family members associated with a child’s profile in Kaymbu can upload photos! You can check which family members these are by navigating to the child's profile on the Roster page. Anyone listed as a family member there can upload media for the child. 

2. What happens to the photos and videos families upload?

All the documentation families add becomes a Moment in the Kaymbu classroom of that child. If families have multiple children enrolled in a Kaymbu program, they will be able to upload one photo or video for both children. That photo or video would become a Moment for both children in their respective classrooms. Teachers can then review, edit, and resend these Moments

3. Can other families see the documentation one family adds?

All the documentation families add is securely transferred to their child's Kaymbu classroom. It is only accessible by the classroom teachers and program administrators. Teachers may choose to re-share the documentation to the class at large, but it is not automatically available.

4. Will family-submitted Moments be included in the Digest?

If your Digest is turned on, family-submitted Moments will get placed into the Digest. This can be a powerful tool as a teacher can add comments or information to Moments in the captions. As long as the edits are added before the time the Digest is scheduled, the edited versions will be sent out as the Moment is re-shared with families! You can learn more about the Digest, and how to manage it here. 

5. What should programs do with the Moments families upload?

This will largely depend on your program's goals with @Home. Generally, it may be useful and engage families and children if you re-share observations. It will allow children to see their peers and friends engaging in the same activities. You could share these observations by sharing a set of Moments or in a weekly Storyboard. You may also be able to use these Moments to maintain a child's learning portfolio or share with program specialists to keep them informed on a child's development.

6. Is there a way to make Kaymbu@Home easier to access for families?

Yes! They can download the Kaymbu for Families App and easily upload photos by going to Home > clicking the green plus button. Alternatively, they can add the Kaymbu@Home webpage as a bookmark to their phone’s home screen and will allow them to easily pull up the web portal! 

7. How can Kaymbu teachers and administrators see which observations families submitted?

Each Moment is tagged with a "Family Submitted" label, and administrators can filter to look at these observations on their Moments page.