Quality: questioning the children in the daycare center

The daycare centers regularly ask parents for their opinion, wishes and satisfaction with the facility. But the children’s impressions are left out. They can also be interviewed according to the same criteria. After all, who can judge the quality of a daycare better than the children themselves? Read here how to correctly question your daycare children.

practical example

The “Villa Wolkenhausen” day care center conducted a children’s survey. The evaluated results are available in the team meeting: 52% of the children wish to be able to do gymnastics more often. The facility currently only offers instructed children’s gymnastics once a week. The daycare management and team work together to find out how this wish of the children can be fulfilled. The solution: The children go to the gym in small groups with an educator and use the movement site. The educators want to discuss the rules for this with the children at the children’s conference.

Here’s how to do it

Together with your employees, think about the form in which you will question the children in your daycare center. The following approaches are possible:

Child survey in writing, as a questionnaire for the children
Oral child survey, e.g. B. as an interview or as a questionnaire that is filled out by the interviewer

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The written child survey

The written survey takes place with a Questionnaire on which the children mark the answers with help or formulate them freely. Make sure that there are no or only a few open questions in the children’s survey that you can answer freely. The open questions are very labor-intensive and time-consuming to evaluate and interpret. In addition, the employee has to write them down for the children.

If you develop a written children’s survey, you and your employees decide beforehand how you want to get the results. Because children of kindergarten age cannot fill out this questionnaire themselves. They need help reading the questions and of course filling them out. Therefore, ask the parents to complete the survey together with their child. Inform the parents in advance about the survey and advise them not to influence their children if possible. Or you ask independent people, such as B. Colleagues from crèche or after-school care center to ask the children the questions and write down their answers.

Forgo that Children themselves questioning so as not to influence them.

Working Aid of the Month: Written children’s survey

We conduct a child survey. We are interested in your opinion and your wishes for us. You can decide for yourself whether you want to participate. Participation is voluntary.

Do you like coming to the daycare? always / mostly / rarely / never
If you do not like to come, why is that?
What do you like most in the daycare?
What do you dislike in the daycare??
What do you particularly like about the educators??
What do you dislike about the educators??
What do you like to do best in daycare?
Where do you prefer to play in the daycare??
If you had 3 wishes, so that it would be even better for children in the daycare, which would they be?

Thank you for responding

The oral child survey

An oral questioning that not on based on a questionnaire with open and / or closed questions, you have to prepare particularly well. This is also the best way for independent people to question the children and write or record their answers.

Limit yourself to a few questions with this method. Because the evaluation is very complex due to the extensive responses from the children.

Conclusion

The child survey is an important tool for quality assurance in your day care center. If you are unsure how satisfied the children are with your offer and what suggestions for improvement there are, please contact the specialists – the children in your daycare center!