Summer Care?

[lflick]

Hello everyone! I am new to the forum so I hope my question doesn't seem silly!

I recently started a daycare in my home. I had a mom ask me if I would be willing to do summer care for a 5 y/o girl and 10 y/o boy. The lady requesting is an acquaintance of mine. Anyways, my question is have any of you ever offered summer care? With older children? Any tips or advice you can offer would be greatly appreciated! I would like to build my "reference" lists and I feel it would be a good opportunity to get my name out there as well. I just don't want the older boy to get bored.... I have an 8 year old boy myself. Actually I have 5 boys.

I digress... any tips, activity suggestions, things that did or did not work would be GREATLY appreciated!

[themoorethemerrier]

Do it!!! Summer care is sooo fun. We made mudpies, caught snakes and bugs, planted, harvested and cooked our own food, had scavenger hunts...

On some rainy days, we made "aged" treasure maps, made sushi, did ballet (boys thought it was hilarious!), blasted Beethoven and " conducted", played with play dough...

Take pictures! The older kids LOVE that we documented their adventures. He are some of ours: https://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Th...19911214752409

During quiet time, because we did have mixed ages, even the big kids laid down and quietly read. After a few weeks, they got bored with reading so I printed off mazes, word puzzles, brain teaser things that they could do during that time. Every now and then the music would lull them to sleep, but for the most part they were pretty excited to show me how they finished some really difficult puzzles.

We were ALL sad to see summer end.

[wdmmom]

I take kids up to 6. I will offer summer care but only for those that have attended daycare with me before and they still nap. No nap, no care.

[mom2many]

Once my oldest son was in school, I started watching s/a and have been doing it ever since for the past 22 years.

I find that as long as I have 2 or more s/a it works out great! They love playing board games, cards and doing arts and crafts. They will spend hours at the table with paper, scissors, markers and glue, but I also have other things I pull out to keep it fun- like feathers, googly eyes, pom poms, stickers, punches, etc. They love to create their own things, but I also provide structured crafts too.

We take walks to the park to do scavenger hunts, play ball, play in the water, etc.

At nap time, they read or do a quiet activity and it works out great.

I have the s/a year round and they come home from school during nap, so they know the routine of being quiet and come in and sit down to do h/w and have a snack.

I find that the younger ones LOVE the s/a and look up to them. It's a great relationship that they form, since many are an only child. The s/a will read aloud and play and interact with the younger ones too. They love dancing and playing school too. It is really fun to watch them!

[itlw8]

I LOVE School age I did cub scouts and a church youth leader

I LOVE preschoolers and toddlers

I just do not love doing them together.

[lflick]

I LOVE School age I did cub scouts and a church youth leader

I LOVE preschoolers and toddlers

I just do not love doing them together.

That is what I am most concerned about. I have one little guy that is about 2. My children are s/a so I thought the s/a would be great for them especially. I was just not sure what others had as far as experience!

Do you tend to charge the same rate for summer as regular rates?

[itlw8]

Yes unless you plan on doing trips and lots of projects then charge more as you costs will be more. Or ask for fees to cover trips when you do them. If you only have 1 little it can work except trips will have to be planned around the littles naps and things the little will like also

[themoorethemerrier]

Ha - church's youth group leaders and toddler ss class teacher here! happyface

I had ages 2 to 10 for most of the summer and at the end we extended the youngest to a baby under 1 yr. The baby was a bit more challenging because he took a morning nap and we had to schedule around it, but 2 to 10 wasn't bad, at all!

As a home daycare I like it mixed, the older kids learned to be more aware and responsible at appropriate times and the younger ones copied the actions of the older kids - which in our case was a good thing. There were certainly times that we separated to different activities.

If the s/a are mostly well-behaved it would be fine, if not I would pass.

I just charged FT rates rather than the PT for during the school year.