The demand for child day care in the US is rising. This is due to many factors including but not limited to the steady increase of working single mothers, more and more married couples working during the day and parents seeing the benefits of day care on a social and educational level.

A viable opportunity exists for day care in most US markets. In 2002 two thirds of all women with preschool aged children worked outside their home. In 1975 only 39% of all women with preschool aged children worked outside their home.

It is very attractive to work from home while running a day care business but careful examination of all the details must be considered to ensure success and compliance with the law. You must treat home day care like a true business. This requires planning, preparation, vision, discipline and dedication. Many people love the idea of owning their own business only to be blown away by all the headaches and responsibilities that come with it. Once you are in business for yourself there is no boss to keep you motivated. You must remain self motivated and you must remain accountable for your actions.

Below are five essential ingredients for successfully starting a home based day care center.

1. Determine the business license requirements for your state, county and city. Some local jurisdictions require a floor plan of your house or the area of the house that will be designated as the day care facility. Be sure to read all of the requirements of the business license. When inquiring about your business license always be friendly when dealing with government employees. There can be nothing worse than getting on the bad side of these employees. This can stonewall the whole application process for months. Once you have befriended one of the state, county or city employees don’t be afraid to ask them plenty of questions about the license. These people can be a wealth of information and ensure you have everything correct the first time.

2. Check on local zoning codes and local laws regarding home day care facilities. Some jurisdictions may have specific zoning requirements if you are running a business out of your home. This may not always be the case but be sure to look into it. Also check any and all local laws pertaining to home based day care facilities. Some states have limits to the amount of children you can care for out of your home.

3. Determine if you can hire employees. While you may start off as just yourself it may surprise you how fast your business grows once you build up a good reputation. Hiring employees can really help you expand your business to greater levels. Always, always, always do full background checks and a full 9 panel drug screen before hiring any employee outside your family. This can be a great selling point to your business and nothing makes your client parents feel better than hearing this level of screening is conducted on all employees.

4. When advertising your business never depend on one avenue of marketing. Be sure to implement as many marketing avenues as you can. Word of mouth is the first and possibly most effective marketing avenue. Print up cards and give them away at specific locations or events. For example see if you can give your card to workout gyms that have their own day care center. You are not competing with the day care of the gym. The day care of gyms are part of the membership. Ads in the paper can be good. Think of all the ways to get your message in front of your prospective clients.

5. Pace your growth. It will surprise you how fast this kind of business can grow. Make sure your business can maintain its high quality care as it grows. Some things to avoid are a sharp influx of registration. You may think an extra 10-15 kids wont be that bad. The managing challenge will go up ten fold. Also stay away from a sharp increase of hired employees to accommodate any increase in registration.

It should also be noted that you should have experience with children before diving into this business. Even if you love children and love the idea of running a day care you need to have experience doing this. The reason for this is two fold. First, you don’t want to go through all this trouble of starting your own business and find out that you can not stand the stress of dealing with children all day long.

Secondly, experience will only help your credentials and will be attractive to many of your customers. For example if you had worked as a nanny for a few years then decided to open up your own day care this would make sense to many of your clients. This background would also make parents feel more comfortable with you.

Dramatically increase your chances of successfully starting and maintaining your own day care center. The essential day care center kit will give you the advantage you need to create a day care center that will last for years. Access to this kit can be found at http://homebaseddaycare.blogspot.com

As an owner of a daycare, you need to see to it that you will be serving nutritious foods. Actually, you do not only have impact on the nutritional intake of the kids under your care but also with their eating behaviors and health habits. You need to be there to help the kids learn the right mealtime behavior and also to enjoy different varieties of nutritious foods.

You need to review the foods that you will serve for the kids under your facility.

Actually, there are recommendations that several organization have agreed upon. For children who are in a daycare for seven hours, you need to give them one third of their nutritional needs. If they have to stay in a daycare for eight hours or more, they should receive one half to two thirds of their nutritional needs. For children who are under your premises for full time, they should have one meal and two snacks.

When serving breakfast, it should consist of milk, fruit, bread or cereal, vegetable or 100% juice. In serving lunch or supper you need to serve milk, meat, fruit or vegetable, bread. When serving snacks it should consist of at least two of these four components namely milk, meat or alternate, fruit or vegetable, bread or alternate.

You have to focus on the use of fresh fruits, vegetable and whole grain when serving meals and snacks, you can also include small amount of meat or meat alternative. Make sure that the foods you’re giving to the kids are fresh and unprocessed.

You have to be able to supply the recommended amount of iron, energy, Thiamin, Niacin, Vitamin A, Zinc, Magnesium and Folic Acid. You can ask for guidance with a dietitian in order to determine and ensure that you are providing the right foods for the kids.

Do not serve foods that contain nitrates, foods with caffeine, drink with high calorie, salty foods and candy. Make sure that the foods you serve are appropriate the ages of the kids under your facility.

For more info see: How To Start A Daycare Business

Dolson McArt – Author of: What Types of Food Should You Serve in Your Daycare

Contributing to EzineArticles.com since March 2007.

Christmas is a holiday where all kinds of kids crafts are created at home and in the school environment.

Crafts for kids, however should be an activity that should bring fun and excitement to children’s activities aside from adding a bonding to the adults that are doing the projects with them.

Educational arts and crafts is a way of doing crafts with children where they are not blindly copying the adults model but are creating things that they are capable of creating at their own developmental level.

When children create at their own level a number of things occur.

It creates a great feeling about themselves, as who can feel good about crafts projects that are copycat models of someone else’s. When the crafts project is totally created by the kids themselves, it makes them feel much better about themselves.

Creativity is also a wonderful reason to switch to educational arts and crafts.

There is hardly anything more that cramps a child’s creativity than being expected to totally copy and adults rendition of a project.

There are between 4-6 kinds of art type of activites listed under educational art.

There is the cafeteria style that allows children to choose materials to work with, there is process only art where the process is what counts along with a few more.

The point of it is that all of the crafts under educational arts and crafts should be age appropriate, and allow for freedom of creation and expression.

Explained below are two simple and inexpensive Christmas crafts activities that you can make from items around your home.

The first one uses plastic throwaway cups:

Offer the kids permanent markers in many colors for them to decorate their cups. Encouraging the children to color all over the cup will make for a nicer ornament.

When they are done, take a cookie sheet and put the cups upside down on it and put in the over at around 350 degrees. Leaving them in the oven between 2-3 minutes will allow them to go down to a good size. Keep an eye on them so they don’t disintegrate in the oven. This part must be done by adults only as it gets very hot.

When they are cool, make a hole in the center and use colorful ribbon to hang as an ornament for your tree.

The second activity is a neat way to use all of your old, ready to throw away cd’s.

Next: Add lots of decorative materials and get them hung on the tree.

There so many methods of beautifying the cd’s.

You can color with permanent markers, glue and glitter them, collage over them, decoupage over them, and decorate them with whatever shiny, decorative materials you can find.

Once they are done, get some pretty ribbon and hang them from your tree.

If you want to see what a crafts acitivity done in the cafeteria style is like then check out this Hanukkah Crafts collage

Faige Kobre is a former teacher and director of Early Childhood Education. She is the founder of The Educational Art Institute which teaches adults how to teach children art and give crafts that raises self esteem, teaches thinking and problem solving skills and explodes their creativity. kids crafts projects ideas for self esteem and creativity

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/childhood-education-articles/need-ornaments-for-your-tree-try-these-2-simple-crafts-for-kids-1561647.html

While there seems to be a lot information to gather, establishing a proper home child care business plan will help you lay out a detailed step-by-step plan with all that you need to know in order to to start a home day care business. Before you begin writing your business plan, make sure your decision to start one is sound. To do so, you have to ask yourself a couple of important questions.

Ask yourself:

- Is this the right business for you?

- Do you have a heart for kids and wish to make a profitable business around them?

- A day care is very demanding and requires great dedication. You need to consider how many kids you will like to start of with, and whether you will need to hire additional help.

Once your decisions are finalized, work on a good child care business plan for your home day care center. A good plan includes information such as the proposed location, the purpose and mission statement of the day care center, information on the new business and a realistic analysis of the funding required so as to jump start the business and keep the day care service profitable. You should also list, on your private business plan, any improvements that will need to be done in order to bring your establishment (usually your home) up to par with local codes for child care establishments.

Do a thorough market analysis in terms of demand and supply. There is absolutely no point in setting up another day care center at a location where there are very few children or where there are already too many day care centers. You will want to make sure that the business is a viable one before investing. Check if the demographic information is available for the location that you wish to start the day care center in and include it in your business plan to help you justify having another day care center at the proposed location.

Day care businesses will require insurance coverage to protect themselves against injuries which may occur on their property. It is important to find out the cost of insurance coverage and include it in your business plan. Like insurance, legal coverage also needs to be researched and included in the business plan as well.

Having a solid child care business plan will allow you to see at a glance, what your startup costs will be and when exactly you expect your business to turn a profit. It also helps you to obtain funding and to get any licenses necessary to start your new day care business.

Miriam Boh is an entrepreneur and owns StartingDayCareBusiness.com. Want to create your own customized home child care business plan that will increase your chances of success in the day care business? Visit http://www.startingdaycarebusiness.com for more details.

Here’s a list of ways to engage your son in reading:

1. Find Books They Are Interested In.
OK…now when I say books I am thinking broadly. I’m not just thinking of dusty cream colored pages filled with tiny black writing. I’m talking comics, magazines, beginner readers, picture books, non-fiction tomes, anything!

These days there is no excuse for a boy not to find something they are interested in reading. There are so many visually appealing books on just about every conceivable subject just waiting to entice viewers into sampling the words that expand on their colourful images.

For visual learners, this is their generation to shine.

2. Really Look For The Best Books To Give Your Child
I mean really look for them and look at them. Not just at the cover or the subject matter, but look inside. Trust yourself. Just because it says Beginner Reader doesn’t mean that it is right for your son.

Just say your son is a “reluctant reader” and loves Star Wars. There are heaps of books on Star Wars so where do you start? The Jedi Quest, Jedi Apprentice and Last Of the Jedi series’ are great but are too dense and overwhelming for early readers. The Dorling Kindersley Beginner Readers are appealing but the vocabulary might be too frustrating for readers who struggle.

Random House released a series of Jedi Reader books to coincide with the prequel films at four different levels of reading and you can find them on ebay. Their vocabulary selection is highly suitable for early readers. Also, comic publisher Dark Horse released a series of comics called Clone Wars Adventures that has many visuals and a few well-chosen words.

Go for what you think will work and if in doubt test it out…Gently.

3. Be Patient & Be Consistent
Be really, really, really patient and totally, totally, totally consistent. Read with your visual learner each day with him sitting by your side. Set aside a time where you read him a book and then he reads to you.

Read him a chapter of a book like Geronimo Stilton, My Father’s Dragon or a few pages of a Tintin book so he can watch the story as he hears your words. Then encourage him to read to you, whether it be a page or a small book, he will develop not only a steady reassuring love for the time he spends with you but a sense that you are really interested in his reading.

You are sharing two things that are so essential to his life-journey: Love and words.

4. Fill Your House With Comics And Other Visual Books
You don’t have to spend a fortune to do this. Thrift stores, second-hand book sales and the king of all things cheap and accessible, eBay, are the places to start.

You can buy auction lots of all-ages comics from the 1980s to the 2000s at a great price. Try the Marvel STAR imprint, Groo (Groo is great for visual humor), Batman Adventures, Justice League Adventures, Teen Titans, Cartoon Network Block Party, Loony Tunes and comic strips like Garfield. Many all-ages comics have also been collected into trade paperback format at an affordable rate.

Purchase new or previously read books in visual series like Geronimo Stilton or visual dictionaries and guides (Usborne offer a great entry level Encyclopedia and information series) to space flight, dinosaurs, computers, mechanics, and thousands of other subjects, one of which is bound to entrance your child.

Once you have books in your house they will pick them look at the pictures then put them down, pick them look at the pictures then put them down and one day they will pick them up and read a few words.
Cool!

5. Reading Levels are a Guide only!
I was acutely aware that my 8 year old son was nowhere near reading fluency while some kids his age were reading Harry Potter by themselves. As a child I was one of those kids who read everything I could get my hands on.

It took a while for me to accept that my son learns in a different way and will come to reading in his own time. I just need to be there to guide him with patience and the right resources. When he is ready I have the books that will open the door to words and the new world that reading ushers in to his life.

Read more about visual books like Geronimo Stilton or comics for kids. Article and sites are maintained by a homeschooling mother with a passion for visual literacy.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/childhood-education-articles/help-your-son-to-read-with-the-right-books-1296134.html

Setting expectations and laying out your rules is critical to your long term success. You have to be firm yet sensitive not to create tension. You will see the parent’s everyday and having a good ongoing relationship is key. Remember that this is your daycare, your house, your business so don’t be shy when it comes time to laying down the law. You have to be firm and okay with hurting people’s feelings once in a while.

For example, late pickups, late checks and rules with sick kids were an ongoing issue for me.

An Example

One of my longest term parents, who I had a great relationship with, and cared for their boy for almost my entire 3 year career were lackadaisical with paying and picking up their boy on time. My cutoff was at 6:00. The wife was a successful doctor and the husband a pharmaceutical salesman who had the job of both picking up and dropping off their child. I rarely ever saw the wife.

The late checks where annoying but I knew they were good for it and the dad was just disorganized and simply forgot. However the late pickups where terrible and for me far worse than the checks coming in 2 or 3 days late. After a long day, I wanted my break and to get all of the kids out of my house. Those 10 or 20 minutes of watching the clock really burned me.

Just about every time he was late he was really sorry and just mentioned traffic and the doctors he calls, will sometimes only see him at the end of the day, etc. I had no idea how to handle this. I didn’t want to do the $1 per minute thing that the daycare centers sometime do. But, I didn’t want this just to go on and on and he was late about once per week.

I did mention the $1 late thing, that, by the way was in my contract, and he was annoyed. I tried to reason with him and though he understood he just could not promise that he would be on time every day due to his job. In a way I appreciated his honesty though I didn’t like what he was telling me. He presented his “case” almost like a take it or leave it and that he would be late – there was nothing he could do to change it.

One late Friday night, spurred the climax of this issue. It was a beautiful evening and we we’re planning on meeting some friends for dinner and he was a full 30 minutes late! which put us back considerably. This was towards my “retirement” and I was getting really burned out. Out of desperation, I called his wife to try to reason with her. She of course had no idea this was going on as he had not told her a thing (she worked something like 80 hours a week). She freaked and apparently, as my husband’s says “dropped the hammer” on him.

He and I where never the same and though they did stick around our relationship was badly bruised as I think he felt betrayed that I “tattled” on him. And despite the drama, he was still late about once a week or so, but would no longer apologize.

Maybe I should have done the late fee, maybe not. They were good customers, all in all and their boy was excellent. He was such a little angel. He was a very happy child that really took to me and the rest of the children. Had he been high maintenance I would have been more firm and charged the fee though I would have lost them as a client. So, despite getting walked on a little bit I still think I did the right thing.

Tania Rauth. Author of “Start Daycare – Develop Twitch” More information on running a daycare at starting a daycare or how to run a daycare or opening a daycare.

Parents may not spend a heap of time pondering upon the make-believe educational toys they provide to their children, but perhaps they must start. A closer examination at play time shows that totally different types of toys stimulate completely different sorts of child development.

A seemingly realistic function-wise operating cash register is integrated with a solar-powered calculator that can accommodate real-size dollar bills The bigger than normal sized buttons and a giant number display makes it appropriate for various levels of educational learning ability. The toy comes with plastic coins, play bills, make believe credit cards and different accessories

Electronic educational toys are flawlessly adapted to the kid’s age and talents/inabilities. Toy makers are very careful about the age they suggest for his or her toys, as kids too old or young will lose interest quickly (and as a result not learn something). Additionally, toys created by companies like Vtech and Leapfrog can help kids with learning disabilities to learn at their own pace, in a custom atmosphere (their home) most suited to their learning needs.

To please both parent and child, look around for nice toddler books. Books created particularly for toddlers are usually ones created from chunky cardboard. They may have pop-up characters, animals with fur that kids will pet, and flowers with a scratch-and-sniff scent. It is necessary for parents to scan to their youngsters to introduce them to language and ideas, and additionally to instill a sense that reading and learning are important. Books conjointly give nice bonding moments between parents and children.

Remember not to overdo it. Sure, it is tempting to strive and single out the most important and best gift that will be at the party. It is forever flattering when the birthday boy or girl latches on to the gift you presented, and barely lets go long enough to finishing opening the remainder! However, the size of the gift and the amount of cash you spend is not as vital as the influence that your gift could have on that exact child. Select something that can incite their minds and encourage their development.

Costumes are the ultimate pretend toys for role playing. Costumes like cowboy clothes for boys and ballerina costumes for girls take them directly into the make believe realm where their dreams all come true.

Jigsaws encourage hand and eye co-ordination. These come as wooden or in huge pieces for this age range. Many of the puzzles have lift out items with pictures beneath to assist children of this age obtain object recognition skills, manual dexterity and form matching skills.

The Best Toys R Us is the premier resource for cash register toys and educational kid toys. Click on the links to visit the website.

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/childhood-education-articles/admired-educational-kid-toys-for-today-1584348.html

A kinesthetic child is often being leveled as a problem student where as the only problem remains upon the teaching method. The basic theme of home schooling is to let the children grow according to their own style. Countries like China and Japan makes their children self dependent right from the very beginning. The first word that a Japanese child learns is “Do it yourself” that reflects the approach of Japanese towards the children.  An ancient Chinese proverb gives a clue its like. “Let me do it myself, I understand, Show me, I remember, Tell me, I forget” one can see this proverb in action watching children play. Kids absorb information at an incredible rate and learn through the senses. They question and explore everything around them because their curiosity is boundless.

The intention of Chinese and the Japanese towards their children is that they let their children explore in their own way without the interruption of any body. Chinese and the Japanese people are being motivated in doing so because of the two remarks stated above about the natural tendency of the children. They give highest priority to the self growing of the child. Every child has his own way of learning. It might not match the expected way of the parents. But they should not loose their temper. Rather they should hold their patience and let the child grow in his way. This attitude of the parents will increase the opportunity for the child to explore his own talent which is the main objective of the method of home schooling.

If the child gets complete freedom to learn whatever he or she likes, the tendency to find the most comfortable way to grow up will increase. When the students get freed up of the restraints of traditional schools, children are enthusiastic active learner stains and ranks for all students nation-wide. In 1983 the Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner was proposed in his famous book of Frames of Mind. Gardner’s proposal said that to create a unique person, there are seven and more recently eight, distinct intelligences works together.

Gardner expressed his requirement of two basic principles at its core to establish the ideal school for the future. Firstly he asked for the authority under which people would be able to explore them completely along with having unique and varied abilities, and interests. Secondly, people should be given informed choices as part of their educational experiences as it’s not possible for one person to learn all. Gardner states that “in assessment of individual abilities and proclivities, an individual-centered school would be rich. It would look to match not only to curricular areas of individuals, but also particular ways of teaching those subjects. And the school would seek to match individuals with the various kinds of life work options which have availability in their culture after the first few grades” The theory of Dr. Gardner can be key element in terms of nursing every child and build them up for the future.

Tehira Hasan is a freelance copywriter and can write any topic you want. She love to write on health, real state, dating, self improvement, home security, gardening and technology related contents.Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/childhood-education-articles/multiple-intelligences-and-homeschooling-1459460.html

If you’re anything like me, who has a vague idea of organization and planning, this can be a daunting process. What business plan? Can’t I just wing it? Of course you can, but even people who wing it have a plan in the back of their heads.

A business plan is simply an outline for what you want your business to become. My father makes business plans for everything-even his garden. That’s going a bit overboard, but you get the picture. It’s a bit like a rough guide for you. If this is the first time, start simple and follow these tips to make your day care the one most talked about in the block.

See a need, fill a need. Familiar? This is great advice from Mr. Bigweld in the animated movie Robots. Find a need that you can fill in your neighborhood or community.

Incorporate your passion. Do you like to do crafts, paint, draw or sing? This can be something valuable that you can combine with your day care for a unique spin on child care. Take your day care kids beyond finger painting.

Get people to chip in. Ask around; see what people want from their neighborhood day care. Cheaper prices? Better care, longer hours? This can possibly give rise to great idea. For example, if a lot of the parents in your neighborhood can’t drive the hour to your day care, why not provide a day care pick up like a school bus or van?

Logo, motto and mission. Create a logo, motto and have a mission that will get people to remember you. This can help fix your business plan as well. Your motto and mission will determine the scope of your day care, as well as contribute to any ideas that you might have in the future.

Plan the small things. Think about how you want to run your day care. What time will you open? What time will you close? Think of what programs you can use. Plan your menus and activities. Plan the big things. Where do you want your business to be in a year? In two years? Do you want to start small and work your way up or try it all for a one time, big deal thing? Set a goal. Do you want to be the biggest day care center in your state by the year 2010? It can be as big as that or you can simply say: I want the kids to love going to my day care center.

Be flexible because no matter how you plan things, you have to have some breathing room for yourself and your business.

A business plan is like your battle strategy, without the giant world map and little pins stuck in various places. Having your business plan can help you immensely, even just with the little things. Take some time, have a cup of coffee or tea and sit down to write it out. You’ll be amazed at what you can come up with.

Learn more: Start a daycare business

Dolson McArt – Author of: Business Plan And Ideas For Starting A Daycare Business

It will be easier if you have money of your own. In that way there will be no hassle to look for any way to start your day care center, all you have to think is how to run the day care center since you already have the means.

However, the question is what if you don’t have that enough money to start up your day care center? Fundraising may be an option, since you’ll be putting up a child care center, pretty sure that there will be lots from your family and friends who will be willing to help you financially since it’s for a good cause, just promise that you’ll pay them back.

Making a bank loan is also an option for you to raise enough money. But you should also take into considerations that applying for a bank loan needs a lot of requirements you have to meet. Not to mention that bank loans has interest, which you are obliged to pay on a monthly basis whether or not your day care center will succeed. Of course you have to budget your income paying for the bank loan including interest, knowing that you also have other incurred expenses and bills that need to be paid as you run the day care center.

Another way of fundraising is applying for government grants. It will be easier for you to start up your day care center if you can apply for government grants since you are not obliged to pay it back. However, applying for government grants is not as easy as one, two, three…it may take some time and effort to apply for this. Just like in bank loans you have to meet their requirements and in the end it all worth it.

Now, whether these tips will work or not, if you are really willing to start up your own day care center you can always think a better way, you can have a book of a successful day care center to gain information and to also have tips on how to start a day care center of your own.

For more info see: How to start a daycare business

Dolson McArt – Author of: Tips in Fundraising for Your Daycare Center