I know there are some providers that use apps to communicate with clients. I got an email today from Scholastic (I'm in the Book Club) about something called the Class Messenger which allows you to communicate with students and/or parents ... in our case children and/or clients (but really for us, mainly parents).

I looked through the demos, signed up (it's free) and set it up to see what it was all about to test it. I actually liked it. What I really liked about it was that it wasn't too difficult to set up, add kids and parent contact info. Also you can have a variety of ways to communicate with them.

You can send messages, surveys or reminders using the online portal or through an app (both Apple and Android) and add photos (although I think only one at a time, not sure yet as I haven't tried sending a photo yet) then you can choose whether to send to students (children) or parents. You can choose one recipient, all recipients or choose which recipients to send the message to. When you set up the parents contact part you can choose to have messages sent either through email, text or push notifications (through their free app) or even all three or any combination.

You can send parents an initial invitation after setting them up (you send them a message) and invite them to join then they can go in to their account and change the way they receive messages to their preference. For example you can choose to have all parents receive your messages in all forms and then they can change the options to suit what their preference is. I think that the variety of ways to communicate with clients is great and leaves many options open. I also love that if some parents are iffy about photos of their own children being seen by other parents or on social media this a great alternative so that all photos are private or shared only with daycare parents.

Just thought I'd share.

Oh and if you are a Scholastic Book Club member and have your daycare signed up use your Book Club login info to sign up for Class Messenger and get 250 bonus points .

https://www.classmessenger.com/

EDIT: Ooh and now that I think about it, those that signed up for pen pals can even add an extra "class" for pen pals and providers can share info and photos through it

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Are you still using this? This sounds like what I've been looking for.

I want a way to share photos and information with currently enrolled daycare parents only - without flooding them with texts and emails constantly...

Just wondering if you are still liking it and if you've had a chance to explore the photo sharing option.

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Yes I still use it. I like it a LOT and use it not just for photos but for reminders also. No matter what type of alert parents want it sends it like that. I just set them up with all alert types and then the parents can unclick the ones they don't like (text, email or app alert). All I have to do is choose who to send it to and the program automatically sends it to whatever method they have chosen.

I like that I can choose who to send it to also. If I take a pic of 3 DCKs I can send the photo to 3 parents only. If I take a pic of 1 then I send to that child's parent only. If I take a group photo I can send to all parents. Works the same for reminders.

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