Those That Do In Home Preschool?

[ksmith]

I'm curious how others run their program. Do you follow a traditional school calendar year and close during the summer or are you open all year? Do you only enroll at the beginning of the school year or year round? Do you do full day five days a week, half days a few time a week, etc? Lastly, do you provide additional care (i.e. before and after the traditional school day) or just during preschool hours?

I'm struggling on deciding on exactly what I want to offer and am curious what types of programs other have been successful at offering.

[Play Care]

I'm curious how others run their program. Do you follow a traditional school calendar year and close during the summer or are you open all year? Do you only enroll at the beginning of the school year or year round? Do you do full day five days a week, half days a few time a week, etc? Lastly, do you provide additional care (i.e. before and after the traditional school day) or just during preschool hours?

I'm struggling on deciding on exactly what I want to offer and am curious what types of programs other have been successful at offering.

When I had mostly preschool aged kids, I did it from September to June. We are on the go too much in the summer months. We still do a short circle/story time but thats it.

[preschoolteacher]

I am opening a daycare/preschool in the fall. Some day, I'd like to transition to just running a preschool which would be for 3-5 year olds and only 3-4 mornings a week from September-June. I think in order to do that, I first really need to become well known, trusted and accredited. Putting myself in other parents' place, I wouldn't enroll my son in an in-home daycare if I wasn't certain it was truly educational. There are many preschools in the area that offer strong competition to my program.

So in the meantime, I am going to enroll children between 3 months and 8 years old, with most spaces reserved for 2 to 5-year-olds. This is how I plan to run the program:

Imagine the house like this -- You walk into the living room, then you walk into the kitchen, and then you walk into the sun room, and they are all lined up so you can see all the way from the front door out the back windows of the sun room. The nap room is off to the side and connects to the kitchen and the sun room.

-- Our large sun room will be the classroom area, with centers and materials like you might see in a preschool. There will be a block area, dress up area, art area, circle time area, and so on. All of the toys and materials will be safe and appropriate for babies and toddlers as well as preschool age kids. We will spend most of our time in here.
-- Our kitchen adjoins the sun room and will be used for eating and messy art projects.
-- Our living room adjoins the kitchen and will be used for school-age kid activities like board games and more complicated arts and crafts projects (so the little kids can't get in here where they might find a small game piece, for example).
--Our nap room is off the kitchen and living room and actually has a window that looks into the playroom, so sleeping kids will be in my line of sight.

Luckily, the way our house is set up makes it easy to divide kids by age occasionally and still be with all of them.

I am offering half-day and full-day options. The morning schedule follows a traditional preschool schedule with free play, circle time, projects/centers, snack, lunch, outdoor time, etc. I scheduled free play during times when I may need to lay babies down for a nap. Go ahead and google "preschool schedule" and you'll come up with many preschools that you can get ideas from.

I think it's entirely possible to have an educational preschool program with little ones around. To me, preschool isn't filling out worksheets or doing teacher-directed art projects. There are some fantastic resources out there for play-based learning for preschoolers (just search that term on Pinterest!). These activities are often very safe for little ones as well as educational and fun for the older kids.

Children can stay for just the morning preschool program or they can stay all day. I expect more parents will opt for the full-day option because during my first few years, I think people will see my program as a daycare rather than a preschool.

Financially, I figured out how many full-time kids I need to enroll in order to be successful. If I enroll a half-day child, I MUST enroll an school age kid for after-school care on that same day or else I will not make a good profit. For me, that's an easy way to understand enrollment and make sure I still come out ahead.

[preschoolteacher]

To answer your other questions, I'll be open 7:30-5:30 five days a week and I will enroll year-round.

[snbauser]

I am in the process of changing my program. I used to run 7-5:30 M-F year round although we did less structured activities during the summer. I am changing to following the school calendar for the school year (being open all school days and teacher workdays) from 6:30-5. I'm opening earlier because our elementary school teachers have to be at work at 7am. During the summer I am M-W from 7:30-4.

[butterfly]

I work school year only. I don't advertise as a preschool, but as a daycare. However, I run my program very similar to a preschool. We do preschool in the mornings - 5 days per week. My kids are all 2 and 3 year olds right now. I'm open 7:30am-5:15pm. I obviously don't do it in the summer, because I'm not even open then, but when I was I still only did a traditional school year. We were always busy going to the pool and park and outdoor stuff when I was open in the summer.

My enrollments are typically done by mid August, however, if I have one move out of my program and have an opening I'm willing to take on a new client mid year.

[EntropyControlSpecialist]

Do you follow a traditional school calendar year and close during the summer or are you open all year? I close certain school holidays and I'm open for most of the others. I am only closed a total of 16 paid days per year. I don't close otherwise.

Do you only enroll at the beginning of the school year or year round? I enroll year round.

Do you do full day five days a week, half days a few time a week, etc? I do full five days a week and part-time is either Tuesday/Thursday or Monday/Wednesday/Friday. I only keep TWO part-time spots available and once those are gone, they are gone.

Lastly, do you provide additional care (i.e. before and after the traditional school day) or just during preschool hours? I am open from 8:00 AM-5:00 PM. I will open between 7:00-7:30 on an occasional basis IF I am asked prior to for no additional charge. I won't open the door otherwise. I used to offer extended care from 5:00-6:00 on a daily basis, then went to never doing it, and now I'm doing it on an occasional basis IF I am asked and the fee is paid prior to ($1.50/15 minutes per child after 5:00, without asking me first it's the late fee $1.00/minute).

We follow a Preschool schedule. This isn't a daycare with free play all day. There are two Center Times where "free play" happens. My entire downstairs is a Preschool (besides my bedroom and the kitchen).

[Michael]

We home school our children and follow a traditional school year but are very flexible on hours/days. We've run into the summer months in order to complete the curriculum. We used www.k-12.com for a couple years and now use www.time4learning.com

[EntropyControlSpecialist]

We home school our children and follow a traditional school year but are very flexible on hours/days. We've run into the summer months in order to complete the curriculum. We used www.k-12.com for a couple years and now use www.time4learning.com

My youngest will be homeschooled (oldest isn't due to being "homeschooled" by biological parents and the abuse/neglect that doing so involved ... he has different needs). I think I've settled on doing it 3 weeks on, 1 week off for the entire year. Although, doing it 4 days/week also appeals to me. We'll see.

[Cradle2crayons]

I LOVE time4learning!! I homeschool,Ed my daughter for first grade and second grade. She's in third grade now Ina very small local high performing public school who still talk about God and often do student led prayer.. Oh and the pledge too!!

I asked her to try out this school this year mainly because we don't have a really local homeschooling group except for one who is geared more towards the higher income community which does NOT include us haha.. I gave her the option but told her if she did decide to go to public school, she has to give it two school years. So, she has an option of coming back home starting her fifth grade year. Lol she's already made her decision to come back home but does love her school too though. I love homeschooling in Mississippi even though we don't have the k12 option and resources other states have.

As far as my daycare, I do preschool work with my son and three if the dck. We do some paper work, we do a lot of hands on work and we do a lot of applications related to our work. For instance, if we're learning about fire safety, we involve the local volunteer fire department and twice a year I actually have the kids call them and report the suspected fire. It's all set up with the fd before hand and its one of those wonderful benefits about where I live

If we do any paperwork stuff it's after nap time and snack time. We do a number, letter, color, shape, bible verse topic etc every week, year around.

Even though I don't currently homeschool my own kids, I teach these kids the same way I've always homeschooled. Each with individual needs and learning processes. I also still do a lot of homeschooling consultations for the local parents who want to homeschool and have no idea where to start. I use that money in the past to afford to homeschool my daughter.

A lot of this OT so I apologize in advance for that.

[LK5kids]

I am open year round- preschool activities Sept.-May. June, July, Aug. fun stuff outside like painting rocks (they wii paint rocks for evah!), plexiglass easel with shaving creme, painting with the cheapo but real brushes with buckets of water, bubble pipes from plastic cups, chalk drawings, sand table with colored sand, making stepping stones......all messy and FUN!

[MarinaVanessa]

I do a 5 day a week program (just getting back into it now that I have enough kids that can participate) that starts and resets in September. We start with the letters A,B & C and the number 1 etc. and it's a full day ... meaning that I hold activities both in the mornings and in the afternoons (most are art or open-ended activities, very few are crafts).

I follow the same concept until June and then in the summer I do more of a review (so that kiddos don't forget what they have learned) but still do morning and afternoon activities. Afternoon activities in the summer are usually somehow water related. I do it this way so that it doesn't matter if a child arrives early in the morning or not or whether they come one day a week or all 5 days ... they always get to participate in something and often take something home at the end of their week.

I have FT, PT and DI clients and enroll all year long.