Daycare, Your Calendar, and Everyone Who Cares for Your Child

Start with the day you are trying to remember

One parent drops off. Someone else picks up. A paper sheet lands in a bag, an email arrives during work, and at dinner you are trying to remember whether your child slept or ate much. You should not need to become an expert in another app to put that day together.

A schedule is the usual plan: when your child goes to daycare and when meals and naps normally happen. A report says what actually happened on a particular day. EchoMom keeps those ideas separate, while giving everyone you invite a shared place to look.

This guide explains app setup and keeping records. It is not medical advice. A saved entry, including an automatically filled estimate, cannot tell you whether your child has eaten enough, needs medicine, or needs medical care.

First, save the usual daycare day

In the mobile app, open Settings, choose Children and the correct child, then open Daycare schedule. The child's account owner manages these settings. If you are an invited caregiver and cannot edit them, ask the owner to set up or change the routine.

You can save a routine yourself or use a routine learned from previous daycare reports. Learned times are estimates of what usually happens. Check them with the daycare before treating them as your child's regular plan. A day without a meal or nap report does not prove that it was missed.

1. Add the daycare or school's name, the weekdays your child attends, and their usual drop-off and pickup times. Use your child's hours, which may be shorter than the centre's opening hours.
2. Check the child's time zone. Times should match the clock at daycare, including when your phone is travelling in another time zone.
3. Under Routine events, add the usual meals or snacks and naps. A nap needs a start time and a duration. Keep each event within the daycare hours.
4. Add known Days off, including closures, holidays, illness, or family trips. Open the Calendar and check a normal day and a day off before relying on the plan.

Case 1: daycare sends email updates

Open Daycare email on the Daycare schedule screen. Enable it to create an email address for this child. This is an inbox for receiving daycare updates, separate from the email you use to sign in.

When a supported message can be matched to the child and daycare day, EchoMom can record reported care and attach notes. Clear closure dates can become days off. It does not need you to retype every accepted update.

An email being sent is not a guarantee that it was processed. Sender restrictions, unclear dates, an unmatched daycare, attachments that cannot be read, or unavailable AI features can prevent an update from being applied. Read the digest and any questions or errors. If an expected update is missing, check the original email and enter the important details yourself.

Email processing depends on the account's available features and AI consent. Keep direct contact with daycare for urgent matters; this inbox is for records.

1. Copy the child's EchoMom email address and ask the daycare to add it as a recipient for that child's updates. Keep your own address on the list too.
2. If they cannot add another recipient, forward the updates yourself or set up forwarding in your email service. If you restrict allowed senders in EchoMom, include the address that will actually send or forward the messages.
3. Check the first processed update in your child's EchoMom chat. Its digest is a short summary of what the message said and what was saved or skipped.
4. Check the day's event details and notes. For a closure notice, check Days off and the dates on the Calendar, including the first day back.

Case 2: daycare gives you a printed sheet

Open EchoMom chat for the correct child and use the photo attachment control to take or attach a clear picture. Include the child's name, date, headings, times, and the full sheet. Avoid including other children's personal information.

For a daily report, EchoMom can read supported care entries and written notes. For a recurring timetable, it can read the usual weekdays, attendance hours, and meal or nap routine. A timetable remains a plan: photographing it does not confirm attendance or mean those meals and naps happened.

Read the reply and compare it with the paper. Check the date, morning versus afternoon times, nap length, and anything marked unclear. Give missing details in chat rather than asking the app to guess.

A separate closure notice may need a text follow-up. If the photo reply has not saved a day off, type the exact closure date or date range in chat, for example: ‘Maple daycare is closed on October 12, 2026. Add that as a day off.’ Then check Days off. Do not assume a date printed somewhere on a sheet became a calendar change.

Keep the original sheet until you have checked the record. Photo reading can misread handwriting or miss part of a page. If photo features are unavailable, you can enter the same details in chat or the event forms.

Case 3: daycare tells you at the door

For an actual update, tell chat what happened and when: ‘Today John napped at Best Daycare from 12:30 p.m. to 1:10 p.m. His teacher said he ate banana at snack.’ Include the date if you are entering yesterday's report. If a time is approximate or unknown, say so.

You only need to set a consistent weekly routine once. For example: ‘At Best Daycare, John's usual schedule is drop-off at 8:30 a.m., a 15-minute snack before his 12:30 p.m. nap, lunch at 1:30 p.m., and pickup at 3:30 p.m.’

That example is missing the attendance weekdays and when the nap ends. Supply those details when chat asks. If the nap really runs from 12:30 to 1:15, say that; do not choose a length just to complete the setup. The snack starts at 12:15. Meals and snacks are saved at their start time, while naps include a duration.

Check the saved schedule after the conversation. Saying ‘usual schedule’ sets up a plan. Saying ‘today he slept from…’ records a report. On days with only a verbal update, you or another caregiver still need to enter what was different, the actual food, and any notes worth passing on. A routine cannot know what was served or how much your child ate.

Choose how to record attendance and pickup

Each schedule has a Use scheduled attendance option. It starts off. In either mode, unrecorded meals and naps appear as Pending estimate before pickup. They are outlines of the routine, rather than completed care entries.

An existing daycare report takes priority over a matching routine estimate. A later matching email report can replace an untouched estimate. If you have edited an estimate yourself, check the later report rather than assuming the app will overwrite your changes. Remove or correct estimates for meals or naps that did not happen.

These filled entries cover attendance, meals, and naps. They do not invent food names, amounts, medicines, or allergic reactions. A scheduled snack is not evidence of a particular food being eaten.

One-tap attendance needs a connection. A manual pickup saved offline can be completed from the routine after it syncs. Keep an eye on pending changes before handing over; the other caregiver may not yet see an offline update. Automatic completion runs shortly after pickup, rather than at an exact second.

• Option off: record Start visit now at drop-off and Pick up now when you collect your child. Pickup adds the remaining scheduled meals and naps inside the actual visit, labelled Schedule estimate. You do not need to select every routine event separately.
• Option on: open today's scheduled daycare visit and tap Daycare attended once your child has arrived. This uses the scheduled drop-off and pickup hours. Routine events stay pending until scheduled pickup; the server then closes the visit and adds the remaining estimates, even if the app is closed.
• Turning the option on alone does not mark your child present. You still confirm Daycare attended for each day. If you confirm after scheduled pickup on that same day, the day can be filled immediately.
• If you pick up early, use Pick up now to record the actual end of the visit. Check the record for a late pickup or changed routine too. Scheduled hours cannot detect that someone arrived early or late.

Give each caregiver their own access

Invite the other parent, grandparent, babysitter, or other person who needs the child's record. Each person uses their own account. Choose permissions that let the right people view the history and record care, and give statistics access to caregivers using the routine pickup tools.

Before their first solo pickup, have the caregiver sign in, select the correct child, open the Calendar, and check that they can see and record the visit. Agree who records pickup so you are not both trying to log the same handoff.

At handoff, explain what is still an estimate, what daycare actually reported, and anything unusual. Receiving the daycare's emails does not automatically invite its staff into your child's account. Sharing a calendar link also does not give someone permission to record care in EchoMom.

Optionally show the record in your usual calendar app

EchoMom's Calendar is where you review and correct the child's daycare record. A Calendar subscription lets another calendar app display the child's care events too. A subscription is a read-only connection: editing a copied event elsewhere does not update EchoMom.

Treat the subscription link like a password. Anyone who has it can read the included event times, titles, notes, and details. Do not post it publicly or use it as a substitute for a caregiver invitation. Disable or replace the link in EchoMom if it has been shared unintentionally.

Calendar apps refresh subscriptions on their own schedule. For the latest report, pending routine, changed pickup, or a correction you need to make now, check EchoMom directly.

1. In Settings → Children, choose the child and find Calendar subscription. Read the privacy notice, then choose Enable and subscribe.
2. For Google Calendar, use a computer web browser. Beside Other calendars, choose the add button and From URL, then paste the subscription URL copied from EchoMom.
3. For Apple Calendar on iPhone or iPad, open Calendars → Add Calendar → Add Subscription Calendar and enter the URL. Follow the remaining prompts, which vary by OS version.

Sources: Google Calendar Help: Add a calendar using its URL · Apple Support: Add calendar subscriptions in iCloud

What to remember

• Save your child's usual hours and routine first.
• Use email, a photo, or chat to bring updates into the same record.
• Check whether an entry is a report, a pending plan, or a schedule estimate.