Tiny Treasures Family Child Care

Curriculum Update
This month we will be focusing on the letters X and Y. Our Color is Yellow and the Shape is Circle. Our themes include “All About Me”, Doctor, Body Parts, 5 Senses and Family.

Homework Assignment: Can you please send in pictures of your child’s family members including Mom, Dad, Siblings, if any, Grandparents, any other extended family members they are close with. Please put on the back of the pictures what your child calls these people. Please don’t send any pictures you would want back for your own use, we are making personal books for each child.

YELLOW DAY : Friday September 22nd we are going to have yellow day. Please have your child wear something yellow
Sign in/out Sheet
I have implemented a new system to help track your child’s time with me as regulated by the state. Please note times daily. I know this will take a little bit to get used to but after a while it will be second nature.

Website Update
Shay has designed a new website for us that will give you more options with the pictures and that makes my life a little easier. He worked very hard and long on it. Attached to this newsletter is information and instructions regarding the new site. I was a little confused the first time I read it, but the second time made sense. If you are confused at all let me know.

September Newsletter Supplemental – Tech
By Shay

Hello all fine parents! This is your in house geek and tech support Shay. There are some big changes coming to the website, changes that will make life for Miss Rachel a little bit easier, and give you a lot more options when it comes to the photos you see each week.

The change will be put into effect Wednesday night. After then, if you go to www.tinytreasures.org it will redirect you to the new site. If you bookmarked update.tinytreasures.org, it will redirect you to the new photo page.

Quick Start: Use your existing username/password, but capitalize the first letter of each.

Part of the reason we are making this change is to offer you more choices of things you can do with the pictures. Currently, my hosted space where TinyTreasures.org lives holds all the pictures. There is a limited amount of disk space, and limited amount of bandwidth (how much data can be served from the website.) Because of this, we have always resized the pictures making them smaller, and uploaded fewer pictures.

From now on, we will instead upload the pictures to Flickr (flickr.com) in the full size original form, all the pictures we take. Flickr “hosts” the pictures, so when you see them at TinyTreasures.org, they are not actually coming from my server, they are coming from Flickr.

All our Flickr photos are photos set to a privacy level that ensures no one but those we give access to can see them. Given this new setup, we had to change the authentication used by the website to allow access to see the photos. You will no longer get a popup box for username and password. Instead, you can view the full site as a normal website. But if you go to the Photo Albums tab at the top, all you will see is instructions that you must log in to see the pictures. There is a link in the text you can hit to log in, or on the menu bar on the right under “Meta” you will see a login link. When you hit that link, you will see a user name and password box. The schema is the same as before, except the first letter is capital for both username and password. Be sure to check the “Remember Me” box, that puts a “cookie” on your computer saying who you are. You should not have to login again from that computer once you have the cookie.

When you login it brings you to an internal dashboard screen. You can safely ignore it and just hit the link at the top of the screen that says “View Site”. Otherwise you can just hit back in your browser. When you go to the photo page all the picture sets should be there.

Questions you may have:

What’s this set you speak of?

A set is a group of photos. We put our sets together on a weekly basis. The set replaces the old weekly entry. The most recent set is the most recent week’s worth of photos. We uploaded all of 2006 as weekly sets to Flickr. We may upload the older photos, as well, as time permits. To look inside a set, click on either the set name or the picture.

Can I take a sneak peak?

Sure… To look at the new website, go to http://www.tinytreasures.org/node/. Navigation is handled on the top of the site in tabs. I am sure you are most interested in the pictures, click on Photo Albums, or go there directly at http://www.tinytreasures.org/node/photo-albums/.

What about the current tinytreasures.org?

It will stay until Wednesday night, and then I will place in a file that redirects all traffic to tinytreasures.org/node/. You’ll want to update all of your bookmarks after the change. If you go to www.tinytreasures.org, it will take you to the new site automatically.

What makes this better? The pictures are smaller than they used to be!

True, the pictures on the initial page are smaller, but you have a lot more options. At any time you can click on a picture and it brings you to a larger view of it. Once on that page, you can click “Previous” or “Next” to navigate the larger size pictures. You can also click “Album Index” to go back to the initial set page. On the bottom of the single picture page you’ll also see some boxes: SQ T S M L O. These stand for Square, Thumbnail, Small, Medium, Large, and Original. If you click on one of those, it will show only the picture itself in that size. If you found a darling picture you wanted to print, click on the O for the largest size possible. It will allow for much better printing. (This feature was made with Jin’s Grandfather in mind.)

Another big thing that makes this better is the work in getting the photos uploaded. On the old site, Rachel had to download the pictures, sort them, import them, export them, resize them, rename them, upload them, then list them all in the website, and try to remember which photo was which to add a few descriptions. Now she downloads them, uploads them and is done. Descriptions are much easier to add on Flickr, as Rachel does it directly under the picture itself.

“View as a Slideshow” and “See Picture on Flickr” links don’t work!?

Sorry about that, it’s part of the authentication. See, when you log in here, you are logging in to tinytreasures.org. The “See Picture on Flickr” and “View as a Slideshow” functions are not done by the tinytreasures.org website, they are pulled straight from Flickr. Flickr may not know who you are.

However!!! You can join Flickr, it’s free. You don’t have to post any pictures, just sign up for an account for free (it is a great and easy way to share photos.) Then let us know your account name, and we’ll make you a Flickr Friend. (Our Flickr ID is “Tiny Treasures – Miss Rachel”.) Once you are made a friend on Flickr, both those features will work.

Flickr also has some nice features like ordering prints, posters, even books! Ask Miss Rachel to see the books I had made for her, they are quite lovely.

I want to leave a comment about a picture and I can’t!

True, in TinyTreasures.org you can’t leave comments on the photos themselves. However, if you join Flickr as per above, you can click the “See Photo in Flickr” link and leave a comment there. The comment will come back through to the picture page. We love seeing parents and grandparents comments.

Your photo stream is all out of order!?

If you go to the Flickr photo stream, yes it is out of order. It does it by the order uploaded… which is not always the most recent if we are uploading older sets. Or in the order the pictures were taken even. Inside the sets we are allowed to set the photo order, not in the photo stream.

What other new things are on the site?

The big thing parents should be aware of is the “Updates” section. All the newsletters will be posted there, as well as reminders about holidays, days off, birthdays, etc… The rest of the site is more for prospective clients, giving information about where we are, who we are, etc… Miss Caitlin will be getting a page, and our contact page has an email form, so if you need to email Miss Rachel, you can do so from there.

Grandpa wants to check it out; do I give him my password?

Any relatives or friends who wish to see the pictures will be given their own username/password. Please email a request for an account to be created for them to me at root@kinshay.com. Requests for an account without a parent’s authentication will be denied.

What if I need help?

If you need any help at all, you can email me directly at root@kinshay.com. You can also ask Miss Rachel, but she will just turn around and ask me I am also usually home by 5PM, so if you see my car and have a question, feel free to have Rachel get me.

Why is there a picture of you holding a cat?

Because, I was too lazy to filter out the non-daycare pictures that happened to be misfiled and uploaded them all. Besides, aren’t I adorable?