Grandparents, co-parents, godparents
Share daycare photos with grandparents without screenshotting one at a time.
The daycare posts twelve photos a day. Grandma sees the two you remembered to forward. Here is how to give her all of them, in a shared album that stays current all year.
Why the app can’t do this
Procare Connect shows photos to the parent account and only the parent account. There is no share button that sends a whole day, no family login, and no export. So the photos that leave the app are the ones you save to your camera roll one at a time and text on. Most nights that is zero.
The photos the grandparents miss are the ordinary ones: the finger painting, the nap-mat grin, the first time on the big slide. Those are the ones they would frame.
The four steps
- Step 1
Get the photos out of Procare
Add Daycare Photo Download to Chrome, log in to Procare, pick your child. Every photo and video lands in one ZIP on your computer, full resolution, named by date. Two minutes for the whole feed.
- Step 2
Make one shared album
iCloud Shared Album if the grandparents have iPhones, Google Photos if not. Name it after your child. Invite everyone once; you never have to send a photo by text again.
- Step 3
Drop the ZIP contents in
Unzip, select all, add to the album. Because the files are named by date, they land in order: first day at the top, this week at the bottom.
- Step 4
Repeat monthly
Run the download again on the first of the month. It fetches only the new photos. Add those to the album. Grandparents see the month the daycare saw.
Setting it up
- Add Daycare Photo Download to Chrome from the Chrome Web Store and paste in the license key from your purchase email.
- Log in to Procare at schools.procareconnect.com like normal. The password goes to Procare’s own login page, never to us.
- Click the extension, pick your child, and download. The ZIP is in your Downloads folder in about two minutes.
We never see your photos. They go from Procare to your computer, and from your computer to whichever album your family already uses.
Ideas once the photos are files
- A digital frame in the grandparents’ kitchen that pulls from the shared album. New daycare photos appear on their counter the day you add them.
- A yearly photo book. Full-resolution files print properly; screenshots from the app don’t.
- A co-parent who isn’t on the Procare account gets the same album, the same day.
Questions parents ask
- Can I add grandparents to my Procare account?
- Some centers allow a second contact, but it is the center's call, and many won't add non-guardians. Even when they do, the grandparent gets the same app with the same problem: photos they can look at but not keep.
- Which shared album should I use?
- Whatever the grandparents already have. iPhone family: an iCloud Shared Album. Android or mixed: a Google Photos shared album. Neither side: a shared folder in Dropbox or OneDrive. The photos are ordinary files once downloaded, so any of these work.
- Are the photos full resolution?
- Yes. The download takes the original file the center uploaded, not the compressed preview the app shows. That's the difference between a print that looks right and one that doesn't.
- Do I have to do this every time new photos come in?
- Run it once a month. It only fetches what's new, so a month of photos takes under a minute, and the shared album stays current with the daycare app.
- Does the daycare know?
- Nothing changes on the center's side. The download reads what your own parent account can already see, and the photos go straight to your computer. We never see them.
- What does it cost?
- $19.99 a year, every child on your account, photos and videos. If a renewal goes through for a year you didn't use, email us and we refund it, no questions asked.