When you make the determination that you are ready to start the process of owning your own daycare, the first thing to recognize is that you are not going down uncharted paths here. The steps you will need to take to set up your daycare are pretty much cut and dried. And while for you each step along the path to finally turning the key and opening the door of your shiny new daycare is an adventure, it is an adventure many have had before you.
That is why there are already a number of good daycare starter kits available to guide you on the path. Probably the most useful thing a daycare starter kit will give you is a checklist not only of what things you will need to do but what order you will do them. And the process the kit will take you through will accomplish two big goals. The first goal obviously is to get the setup and preparation work done so you can move forward at a steady pace toward making your dream of owning a daycare a reality.
But the second goal may be the most important one. The process the kit will take you through will give you an education into what is required of you and what areas of study and focus you must give time to before you take the next steps toward opening your daycare center. The education process of taking you from the dreamer status to a well-informed daycare owner is vital to equipping you with the knowledge and the awareness of pitfalls and opportunities to keep your eyes open throughout the preparation time frame.
A good starter kit gives you a number of organizational advantages that put you way ahead of the game in starting your daycare. For one thing, the kit answers the question, “What do I do first?” as well as the question “What next?” The plan of development by itself is worth the cost of the kit because you get the sequence of steps to go through, the details you need to attend to in order to see success each step of the way and the timing you should expect to need to complete each step. That schedule is critical so you can tell if you are ahead of schedule or lagging behind and you can forecast a date when you can expect to actually open your daycare center.
A daycare starter kit will also give you a jump start on the regulatory issues that you must attend to so you can get your daycare operators license and the medical and dietary “must-dos” so you can document that you are running a facility parents can entrust their children to. The kit gives you the forms customized to your state and the procedures, email addresses, web sites, and phone numbers so you can learn what will be required of you to comply with regulations so your daycare center can be certified and operate in a way that is approved of legally as well as by the parents who look to you to run your daycare in a professional way.
Finding a daycare starter kit isn’t difficult. There are a number of them available on the internet. But get some references on these kits because if you are going to spend money on a starter kit, you want to know it has helped others be a success in getting their daycare up and running. In fact, doing some interviewing with recently opened daycares and their owners might point you toward starter kits that have tangible evidence that they work because they helped one of your neighbors get started. So they can help you too.
