There’s a moment most parents know well. You pick up your tamariki at the end of the day and ask, “What did you do today?” And you get: nothing. A shrug. Maybe the name of a friend, if you’re lucky.
That wandering gap, the hours between drop-off and pick-up where you have no idea what your child is up to, is something we’ve worked hard to close at Growing Wings. Not because we think parents need to see every moment, but because we believe the relationship between whānau and kaiako is strongest when it flows both ways, and when you understand what your child is experiencing at our Hamilton early learning centres, you can extend that learning at home in ways that genuinely make a difference.
The tool that makes all of this possible is Playground, and in this post, we want to walk you through exactly what it does, what you can see as a Growing Wings family, and how it compares to apps you might have come across at other centres.
What Is Playground?
Playground is an all-in-one early childhood platform built specifically for the ECE sector. It’s the system our kaiako use to document learning, track health and safety, communicate with whānau, and manage the daily rhythm of centre life, and it’s what you’ll use as a parent to stay connected to your child’s day.
It was developed by Discover by Xplor, New Zealand’s leading all-in-one student management and parent engagement software platform, and is certified for the New Zealand market. That matters – it means it’s built to meet Ministry of Education requirements, not adapted from an overseas system.
Real-time health and routine updates
Sleep checks, nappy changes, meals, sun protection, and any medication or incident records are logged by our kaiako as they happen and visible to you immediately. If your pepi has had a tricky morning or a brilliant nap, you’ll know about it before you’ve finished your morning coffee.
Learning stories through Posts
Our kaiako documents your tamariki’s learning through rich Posts: stories that include photos, videos, audio recordings, and written observations linked to your child’s individual learning journey. These aren’t quick snapshots. They’re meaningful records of what your child is investigating, how they’re connecting with others, and what their kaiako are noticing and planning around. You can like them, comment on them, and share observations from home, which feeds directly back into how your child’s kaiako plans for them.
Direct messaging with your kaiako
Playground’s Messenger feature gives you a direct, private line to your child’s kaiako during the day. No waiting until pick-up. No messages lost in a group email chain. Just a simple, real-time conversation between you and the people caring for your tamariki.
Attendance and sign-in
You can sign your tamariki in and out digitally, and view your bookings and statements directly in the app, everything in one place, no separate systems to manage.
How Playground Compares to Storypark
If you’ve had a child at another centre before, there’s a reasonable chance they used Storypark, it’s well-established in New Zealand and does the job of documenting learning stories well. So it’s a fair question to ask: why did we choose Playground instead?
We want to answer that honestly, because we think it helps you understand what you’re getting as a Growing Wings family. Both apps share a genuine commitment to connecting families with their child’s learning. Both allow kaiako to create learning stories with photos and video, both support two-way communication between home and centre, and both are designed with the New Zealand ECE context in mind. Storypark has a strong track record and a large community of users across the sector.
Where we found Playground to be the better fit for what we do at Growing Wings comes down to a few specific things.
Everything in one system, not two
Storypark is primarily a learning documentation and family communication platform, it does those things well. But it operates separately from a centre’s administration system, which means kaiako often work across multiple tools: one for documentation, another for attendance, health tracking, rosters, and compliance. Playground integrates all of these within the same ecosystem as Discover, our administration platform. For our kaiako, that means less time switching between systems and more time with the tamariki in front of them. For families, it means your health updates, learning stories, bookings, and communications all come through one app.
Health and safety tracking that’s genuinely real-time
Playground was built with health and safety as a core function, not an add-on. Sleep checks, nappy changes, meals, incident records, medication logs, and even offline emergency contact and roll call lists are all part of what kaiako can manage within the app. Parents see this information as it’s logged. This level of real-time health visibility isn’t a standard feature in Storypark’s core offering, it’s more focused on the learning story and documentation side of ECE life.
Planning built into the mobile app
One of the things our kaiako appreciate most is that Playground’s full planning and programming cycle is available on the mobile app, not just the web platform. That means a kaiako can capture an observation in the moment on the floor with a child, link it to their learning goals, and update their planning without needing to sit down at a desktop later. Storypark’s planning functionality has historically required logging into the web platform rather than the app, which creates a gap between what’s captured in the moment and what gets formally documented.
What This Means for Your Child’s Learning
The practical effect of all of this is a closer loop between home and centre and that loop is where some of the richest early learning happens.When you can see a learning story from this morning and recognise the same transporting urge your tamariki was exploring at home last night, that connection means something. When your child’s kaiako knows that they spent the weekend at the beach collecting shells because you shared it through the app, they can weave that into the week’s environment. When a health update tells you your pepi had a shorter nap than usual, you know to plan a quieter afternoon. None of this requires extra effort on your part. It just requires a good app and kaiako who use it well. We try to be both.
Getting Started With Playground as a Growing Wings Family
When your tamariki enrols at Growing Wings, we’ll send you a link to download the Home app and connect to your child’s profile. It’s free, available on iOS and Android, and takes a few minutes to set up. From that point, everything flows through automatically. There’s nothing complicated to configure and no separate login for different types of information.
If you’d like to see what the app looks like in practice before you enrol, we’re happy to show you during a centre tour. Come and visit us. We’ll walk you through a day in the life of a Growing Wings tamariki, app and all.
Book a Tour at Our Hamilton Early Learning Centre.
Frequently Asked Questions
- What updates will I receive through the app?
Real-time health updates including sleep, meals, nappies, sun protection, and any incident or medication records. Learning stories and Posts from your kaiako. Direct messages from your child’s primary carer. Booking confirmations and statements. - Can I share things from home with my child’s kaiako?
Yes, you can share photos, moments, and notes from home through the app, and your kaiako can see them. This is one of the things we value most about how the app works: it makes the connection between home and centre genuinely two-way, not just a broadcast from us to you. - Is my child’s information private and secure?
Yes. Playground is a secure, cloud-based platform. Your child’s information and learning stories are only visible to you, the people you invite, and the Growing Wings team. You control who has access.
