Starting a New Center: Articles

Starting a New Center: Resources

Spaces for Children Video: Take a look at our online video of seven centers that use Community Playthings. Hear teachers just like you explain why they bought our furniture, how they use it in their classrooms, and how long it lasts in a busy child-centered environment.

Child Care Design Guide by Anita Rui Olds: Contains everything you need to know to plan, design, and build developmentally appropriate and child-friendly centers. Available from Community Playthings at 40% off bookstore cost.

Caring Spaces, Learning Places Jim Greenman: This exceptional book demonstrates how centers can face real-world challenges and make quality care a reality. Readers will be empowered by new ideas on how to make child care programs work for children, families, and staff.

Starting a Child Care Center: The Indispensable Guidebook for Starting a Child Care Business Millicent Gray Lownes-Jackson: A practical, comprehensive, and motivational entrepreneurial guide. Starting a Child Care Center uses a uniquely designed step-by-step, hands-on approach to business formulation. Worksheets are included for the purpose of providing assistance in preparing a business plan. Crucial business development and management information is provided in an easy-to-understand format.

How to Start a Quality Child Care Business US Small Business Administration: This publication will help you plan, prepare and operate your child care business. It explains the step-by-step process of starting the business, from assessing the need for child care services to selecting the service, setting up your business and preparing for opening day. A sample business plan outline for child care businesses is included, in addition to a sample parent survey, a typical undergraduate curriculum in early childhood instruction, general resources and a list of related national organizations.

Adults are from Earth; Children are from the Moon Randy White: One of the challenges we constantly face when designing for children is to create an environment (including equipment and furniture) that produces the desired behavior and outcomes - and deters undesirable behavior. Just as there is a gulf of misunderstanding between genders, often described with the analogy "women are from Venus; men are from Mars," likewise there is a gulf of misunderstanding between most adult designers of children's environments and the children they're designing for.

Starting a Child Care Center Program Child Care Lounge: It can be easy to feel lost or overwhelmed when starting a new child care center. You have a dream but you’re not sure how to realize it. Here is just a partial list of things you need to consider and some resources and information to get you on your way.

Parent-Teacher Partnership Sally Goldberg, Ph.D: Dr. Sally gives you a great take-home article for parents, describing the joint goals of center and home life. This article fosters partnership and communication between parents and teachers, and there’s an undisputed benefit to that!

Designing Child Care Facilities National Child Care Information Center: Here are 10 pages of succinctly listed information for you as you work toward starting a new center. They recommend books and websites for every step of the way, including national organizations, regulations and standards.

Child Care Online: Our mission: To champion excellence in child care by working hand in hand with all members of the child day care community. To focus the passion in caring for children into excellence in our undertakings. child care online is committed to bringing you the best child care services and information available.

Whole Building Design Guide: While their parents work, seven out of ten American children under the age of six participate in some form of care outside the home. Because many of them spend up to 12,500 hours in a child development center—most of their waking hours—the facility must be designed to provide safe, nurturing, and stimulating environments essential for the healthy development of our children.

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