How to prepare your Tapestry account for setting closure and remote learning: Children

[EmilyTapestrySupport]

We’ve written this series of articles to help you prepare your Tapestry account for setting closure in the wake of the Coronavirus pandemic. We hope they offer some help and guidance in this difficult time. 

If your setting has already closed, we recommend you still take a look as you may find the advice here is beneficial. 

In this article we’ll look at preparations you can do on your account relating to children. Linked below you’ll find articles for staff and relative preparations as well. Please note, this article is intended for managers on a Tapestry account.

How to prepare your Tapestry account for setting closure and remote learning: Staff

How to prepare your Tapestry account for setting closure and remote learning: Relatives

 

What we will cover here is:

1. Are the children on your account set up correctly?
2. Have you assigned key children to staff or set up manual groups? 
3. Creating folders in Documents for a group
4. Adding an About Me for a child 

 

Let’s get started. 

 

1. Are the children on your account set up correctly? 

You can use this time to ensure you have any information you need for children on your Tapestry account. 

You can do this by going to the Control Panel (1) -> Manage Children (2). 

Here you will see the names of all the children on your account. In the section for each child you can see their date of birth (3), so you can check this is correct. 

If you haven’t already, you might want to take this opportunity to add profile photos for your children (4). To do this you can click on the ‘Edit’ button for the child you want to upload a photo for (5). 

 

 

To upload a photo for a child you just need to click on the ‘Add Photo’ button at the top (1). 

It might be a good idea to take some time to go through the rest of this page to ensure all the information is correct and to add any information that is missing (2). 

 

 

2. Have you assigned key children to staff or set up manual groups? 

Now would also be a good time to ensure you have the children on your account organised into groups. This will make it easier for you in the long run when adding data for them on Tapestry.

The first way you can do this is to attach children to staff as their key children. This can be done by going to the Manage Staff page on the Control Panel (1), then click on the ‘Manage Key Children’ button (2).

 

 

Here you can see all staff on your account. You can go through each one and click on the ‘Edit Relationships’ button to assign children. 

 

If you then wanted to set it so staff can only view their key children, you just need to follow this tutorial. If you also wanted to set it so you can only see your key children, this is the tutorial you will need. 

As well as/instead of this, you may want to create manual groups of children. To do this, stay on the Control Panel and select ‘Manage Groups’ from the left-hand menu (1). 

To add a new group, just click on the ‘Add Group’ button (2)! You can add as many groups as you wish here. 

 

 

3. Creating folders in Documents for a group

In the Documents feature, you may want to create folders for each class or group on your account. Staff can then put files in there for that specific group of children and share them with relatives too if they wish. Please note that if you make files in a folder accessible to relatives, this means all relatives will be able to download them. 

To do this you just need to go to ‘Documents’ at the top of your page (1). To add new folders to your account you can click on the ‘Add Folder’ button (2). 

Once you have organised your folders, you can then upload files using the ‘Add file’ button (3). This tutorial talks you through the process.

 

 

4. Adding an About Me for a child

The last thing you may want to consider doing is setting up ‘About Me’s’ for children on your account. You can use these to input information yourself, or you can ask parents to fill them in about their child. 

This may be a good opportunity for you to learn additional things about a child which you can later use for planning activities. 

To add an About Me, go to the ‘Children’ tab (1), click on a child’s name (2) and from the drop-down, select ‘About Me’ (3). 

 

If you want to fill in a child’s About Me, click on the ‘Edit About [Child’s name]’ button. 

 

If you want to allow relatives to see and edit their child’s About Me you will need to go to the Control Panel (1) -> Settings (2) -> About Me (3).

 

 

If you scroll to the bottom you have the options to allow viewing (1) and editing (2) of children’s About Me’s by relatives. Above this you can also add any of your own custom statements (3).

You may want to add some custom statements specifically related to PSED and how the child might be feeling in the current situation. Once added, these will show up on every child’s About Me.  For example: 

• How I am connecting with others: (e.g. facetiming with a relative, sending a recording of me singing, taking photos of me and sending them to my friends)
• Things I have needed reassurance about:
• Things I am being confident about:
• These are the feelings I have been sharing:

If you scroll back up the page you can choose which of the default questions supplied by Tapestry will be displayed (4). 

 

So, those are things you might want to consider doing on your account in preparation for your setting closing, or if it already has. We hope you found it useful and we hope you and your children and families stay safe and well over the coming weeks.