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I have been in business for 13 years but closed last fall because I was pregnant with our now 6 month old twins. I reopened in July and here on small town America good full time families are hard to come by. Unfortunately I've ended up with families that want a day here and a day there. I need my spots filled yano? Do you guys just offer set days for part timers? I know the prek where our oldest went you chose between Tuesday/Thursday or Monday/Wednesday/Friday. I only want 3 dck's per day but some days I have 3 and some days none. It's making me crazy!
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I am having the same issue. Last time I was in a big town easy to find kids. I am in a small town here and it is hard not many calls at all. I am open right now to part time kids, but I also have in mind that when I get built back up I may have to stop doing part time care. I really think that for people who only want part time care, they can usually find it. I will cross that bridge when I get to it. So I guess my advice is go ahead and take them and in six months or a year or whatever you can rethink it if you need to. And sometimes part time kids can become full time kids! You and I are in the same boat! -
I love part-timers!
I love enrolling part-timers in my program. In the six years I've been in business, I've actually only had one full-time family.
This is how I handle it:
I break my day in half: from 7:30-12:15 and from 12:15 - 5:00. Then I let people choose half days of full days in any combination they need.
(For example, one of the kiddos comes all day monday, wednesday pm, and thursday am.)
Amazingly, I am always full! The part-time schedules end up combining magically into six full-time spots. This school year I do have two afternoons a week when I have five kids instead of six. But that feels like a nice little break for me and it gives me the opportunity to offer some space to drop-ins.
I have a white board where I write out each day of the week, broken up into morning and afternoon and write down who is coming when.
I think the reason that this works for me is that in my community there are many, many people who are self-employed. Those are the clients I tend to attract. They like that I just charge them for the time they need and I like them because their schedules tend to be very flexible and can work around the openings that I have.
Good luck making it work for you! I prefer serving part-time families much more than full-time families! It gives me way more variety to my week and then I am much less dependent on the income from each individual family. For my six spots, I serve 14 different families!
Alexis
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Part time families are my favourite! I charge more for less days. So for example, 1 day is $40, 2 days is $75, 3 days is $105, 4 days is $130, 5 days is $150. It is also more expensive for more than 10 hours of care.Comment
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I don't look at care as part time or full time. I look at it in terms of days.
I offer
5 days a week for $x amount
4 days a week for $x amount (about $1 per day more than 5 days a week)
3 (same days a week) days a week for $x amount (about $1 per day more than 4 days a week)
3 (varying days a week) for same rate as 4 days a week (with some exceptions/additions)
Anything less than 3 days a week is drop in. Drop in costs 2.5 times more than my daily rate for 3 days and payment is due AT drop off and reservations for drop in can not be made in advance.
So no part time or full time care here. Only 3,4 or 5 days.Comment
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I love part timers also because I get more per day for them than for full timers as well. I don't do short/half days - part time to me just means less days per week. I also only allow set days, no switching. Then I just use a spreadsheet with 5 lines (5 is my max # of kids) and I fill in their names in the boxes - makes it easy to see which days I have avail for drop ins or adding another part timer.
If I had 1 full timer M-F they'd pay $175/wk but 2 part timers filling those same 5 days would be $210. AND even if I only filled 4 of the days (say 2 days each child), that would be $180 - still $5 more for the week yet I have one day with 1 less kid, which I never mind!Comment
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I don't really like having part-timers, but from a parent's perspective, I want to be with my daughter as much as possible, so I get it. Most of my families are part-time, because they want to be with their kids, too, and work for themselves or part-time so they can be. I have only 1 "full-time" child. (In quotes because my full-time is only Mon-Thurs. When I realized I was attracting mostly part-time families, and I wanted more time to homeschool my daughter, I dropped Fridays). I allow kids to come two or more days/week. I piece it together however I can, letting them take what's available. So right now I have
1 kid who comes M, T, W, Th
3 who come M, T, Th
1 who comes W, Th
1 who comes T, W
1 who comes M, W.
It's not perfect: I am licensed for 6, but have only 5 on Wednesdays. I do not want to fill it with a 1-day/week kid, and there's only one currently-enrolled child who could add Wednesdays, and they don't need it. So I leave it alone. If I wanted to, though, I could tell that family that I only have a full-time slot and have them take it or leave it, so you could make it work to be full, I suppose.Comment
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Probably
..... I've just learned to move away from using the terms "part time" or "full time"
I don't say "I have a part time family"
I say "A 3 day a week family"
It's just a play on words so that families view their rates/services differently than the normal part time/full time standards.
It was something I picked up in a marketing class. For some reason parents supposedly react to it in a more positive way.
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I may institute a weekly pay rate instead for future clients after Jan 1 depending on how things go for us moving. I currently charge a daily rate that varies by how many days they choose ($45 for 4-5 days, $50 for 2-3 days, $60 for 1 day) but still calculate it all daily. Some families pay monthly on the 1st, some pay bi-weekly on their first day, some pay bi-weekly every other Friday.
I do invoices based on their pay schedule every 2wks except one family because she doesn't even look at the invoice anyway. 
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I might end up in a community where this might work well. What ages do you accept and what does your curriculum/activities look like?I love enrolling part-timers in my program. In the six years I've been in business, I've actually only had one full-time family.
This is how I handle it:
I break my day in half: from 7:30-12:15 and from 12:15 - 5:00. Then I let people choose half days of full days in any combination they need.
(For example, one of the kiddos comes all day monday, wednesday pm, and thursday am.)
Amazingly, I am always full! The part-time schedules end up combining magically into six full-time spots. This school year I do have two afternoons a week when I have five kids instead of six. But that feels like a nice little break for me and it gives me the opportunity to offer some space to drop-ins.
I have a white board where I write out each day of the week, broken up into morning and afternoon and write down who is coming when.
I think the reason that this works for me is that in my community there are many, many people who are self-employed. Those are the clients I tend to attract. They like that I just charge them for the time they need and I like them because their schedules tend to be very flexible and can work around the openings that I have.
Good luck making it work for you! I prefer serving part-time families much more than full-time families! It gives me way more variety to my week and then I am much less dependent on the income from each individual family. For my six spots, I serve 14 different families!
Alexis
The community has a lot of SAHMs.Comment
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