Guide · For teachers · 15 minutes

Your first week with RoundUp

This is everything you need for the classroom — nothing about billing, nothing about licensing paperwork. Read it once before your first day and keep it on the shelf by the tablet.

Last updated: September 1, 2026 · Print this guide

1. What RoundUp replaces

Almost everything on the clipboard. Here is what moves onto the tablet in your room:

2. Setting up the classroom tablet

1. Turn it on and join the center's Wi-Fi

   Follow the on-screen setup. If your center manages devices centrally, your director may have done this already — check before you start.

2. Install RoundUp

   Open the App Store or Google Play and install RoundUp Early Childhood. It is free to install; your center's subscription controls access.

3. Sign in

   Open the app and sign in with your work account. RoundUp does not hold a separate password for you — you sign in through your center's identity provider, the same account you use for work email.

   If nothing happens when you sign in, your account may not be assigned to a classroom yet. That is a two-minute fix for your director, not a problem with the tablet.

4. Put it where the sign-in sheet used to be

   Mount it or stand it near the door, on the charger, at adult height. A tablet in a drawer does not get used, and a tablet at child height gets used enthusiastically by the wrong people.

3. Checking your roster

Your director imports children before you start, so your job is to check the list rather than build it. Open your classroom and confirm, child by child:

• The name is spelled the way the family spells it — including the name the child is actually called
• The child is in the right room
• Allergies and medical notes are there and correct
• Media permissions match what the family signed — photos, video, sharing with other families, outside use, downloads, and any date range on them
• At least one parent or guardian is attached, with an email address
• Authorized pickups look right

Anything wrong or missing goes to your director rather than getting fixed in the moment — allergy and pickup fields are the ones licensing checks.

4. Your first day, in five steps

1. Check children in as they arrive

   Tap the child's photo on the home screen and confirm the check-in. The time stamps itself, the ratio count for your room updates, and the attendance record is made — no sign-in sheet to transcribe later.

   If a family is running late or out sick, mark the absence so the office is not calling around at ten o'clock.

2. Log the day as it happens

   Tap the plus button to add an update — a meal, a nap, a diaper change, an observation. Add it in the moment rather than reconstructing the day at four o'clock; a two-second tap beats twenty minutes of memory.

   You can select several children at once for anything that happened to the group, then deselect the ones it did not apply to.

3. Add photos

   Choose the activity update type, pick the children in the photo, attach it, and save. One good photo a day per child is a realistic target and it is the single thing families mention most.

   Check permissions before you shoot, not after. Media permissions are set per child and they are not a single yes-or-no — a child may have photos allowed but video refused, or photos allowed for their own family but not for sharing with other families in the room. Some permissions also carry a start and end date. You can see the current state on the child's profile.

   Treat the roster as the source of truth and check it at the start of each term, when a new child joins, and any time your director tells you a permission changed. If you are not sure about a child, leave them out of the shot — an unshared photo is a small loss, and the other kind is not.

   RoundUp backs you up here. A photo of a child whose family has sharing switched off, or whose permission window has not opened yet or has already closed, is not shown to families — it is withheld by the server, not merely hidden in the app, so it stays withheld however the photo is reached. Withdrawing a permission takes effect on photos already taken. Downloads are the one setting that is not a server-side wall: it hides the save option in the app, but a family that can see a photo has already received it, so treat that one as a preference rather than a guarantee. None of that is a reason to skip the check before you shoot: the app can only enforce what has been recorded, and staff still see every photo at your center so the room can pull one that caught the wrong child.

4. Check children out and send the day for review

   Check each child out as they leave. Then open End of Day in your room, walk the checklist, and send. That hands the room's reports to your director; their approval is what releases the written part of the day — highlights, observations, photos — to families, in the app and by email.

   The care log does not wait for any of that. Meals, naps, diapering and toileting reach families as you record them, which is why a parent may message you about a bottle at eleven in the morning.

   Send every day of your first week, even the days it feels like there is nothing to say. Families calibrate on consistency; a report that arrives some days reads as a report that is missing on the others.

5. Answer your messages

   Tap the envelope icon to see messages from families. Reply, or archive it once it is handled, so the inbox reflects what still needs you.

   Messages are per child and visible to your director — that is deliberate, and it is what keeps classroom communication a center record rather than a personal text thread.

5. Day two and beyond

Once the daily rhythm is comfortable, these are the features worth learning next, roughly in the order most teachers find them useful:

Activity planner

• Plan learning experiences ahead of time, by day or by week
• Pull a planned activity straight into a daily update instead of retyping it
• Reuse what worked — last spring's plans are still there

Observations and development

• Tag an observation to a developmental skill as you write it
• Each child's portfolio fills in over the year without a separate binder
• Conference prep becomes reading rather than assembling

Reminders and alerts

• Set a reminder for yourself — sleep checks, medication times, a supply request
• Send an alert to families in your room for a field trip or a closure

Ratios

• Your room shows its live staff-to-child ratio against your state's requirement
• Check it before you step out — it is the fastest way to know whether you can

6. When something goes wrong

RoundUp was built for early childhood educators. If something in the app makes your day harder rather than easier, we want to hear it — that feedback is what the next release is made of.