Early Child Care for Running an In Home Daycare

Work at Home Mom Resources > Starting an In Home daycare

There are many people who need child care for their children that are too young to go to school. Taking care of children that range from the ages of a few months old to 4 years old has it challenges. If your children like socializing then they will probably really enjoy it if the children you watch are of the same age. This could limit your cliental, so if your children are happy with who ever you watch you might consider expanding the ages you accept. Generally you can charge more for children this young, especially if they are still in diapers, but you have your work cut out for you. There are some techniques to make the day go by smoother.

Keep Milk Near By for the Infants - since you don't want to be leaving some of your kids unsupervised, you will want to keep the milk you need to feed the infants that you watch near by. A bottle warmer might be a good investment if the parents of the babies that you watch would prefer for the milk to be warm.
Nap time - incorporate a nap time, this will help the children recenter and allow them to not get too overstimulated. If you can get all of the children to nap at the same time it is a nice break for you too.
Snack Time - you can use a healthy but fun snack for snack time. This will help create a structure for the children and they will look forward to it. You can have as many as you want a day.
Story Time - another thing that children often enjoy is story time. If you find that by a certain time of the day things seem to get crazy, you might designate that time as story time to calm things down.
Diaper Sorting - if you know how many infants you are caring for a head of time, before the children arrive, take out a garbage bag for every diaper wearing child you will have. With a marker write the last name of the child on a bag. Get just as many twisty ties as bags. If you have a diaper pail lay the bags in it. When you change a diaper of baby Smith put it in the Smith labeled bag, tie it up and toss it into the pail. That way when parent Smith comes to pick up their child they won't have lost any of their cloth diapers.
Keep Track of Toys and Extra Clothes - If a child brings in a toy, write it down. That way when the child is picked up you can look at your notes to make sure that they got everything.

Check out tips for starting and running an in home daycare in general.

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