For those that love kids, a career is child care is often at the top of their list.
Child care is a huge business in today’s world, with both parents often working and a place for children too young to go to school or to be after school may be the perfect place to work. However, there are some qualifications that you’ll need to have in order to work in a day care or child care center, and especially if your goal is to manage one. Here is what you need to know about what kind of classes, certification and other education you need in order to have this career.
College Courses
Many colleges offer courses in Child Care. This may be a certificate or an associate degree program, and will require a certain amount of credit hours, and different courses depending upon which college or University that you are attending. However, most are very similar to the following.
Associate of Science in Early Childhood Education
This is a program for those interested in working in child care and is usually a two year degree program that will provide the student with an Associate Degree. The course usually offers skills and theories for teaching young children, including how to teach and care for infants all the way up to six years old. They will also learn how to build relationships with parents so that they can care for the children better.
Prerequisites For Degree Program
Most of the time in order to earn the Associates of Science in Childhood Education you need to have a High School Diploma, General Education Diploma (GED) or High School Equivalency Diploma (HSE). Also, there may be additional requirements such as meeting with a representative about the program, or a placement test before you begin the program.
Background Check
Some degree programs require a background check before you will be allowed to take them. Law Enforcement programs are a common example of this, and while you may not be required to pass a background check before you take the child care degree program, you will almost certainly have to pass one before you are employed by an agency or child care center. This is something that you should be aware of and talk to your counselor if you have any sort of criminal history.
Coursework
The students that study the child care associate degree program will not only attend classes to learn the principles and theories of child care but may also participate in student teaching to get experience in the real world. This may include coursework in the following areas.
Nutrition for children including preparing food and works best for different ages, as well as information on allergies and anything else related to nutrition that the care provider will have to know to be able to feed children of varying ages and backgrounds, or medical problems.
Child Health including exercise and fitness for children, as well as when and how often they should take naps, how much exercise they should have and also how to care for sick children, how to determine the severity of a potential health condition and how to treat common problems like cuts and scrapes as well as anything else that is related to the health of children.
Students will learn the dynamic between child and parent, and how relationships function so that they can be better prepared to work with both parent and child and provide the best care possible. This may include basic psychology, human interaction and child psychology.
Strategies for behavior modification. Students will learn the fundamentals of working with children and how to work to modify their behavior when they are not acting appropriately. There are different strategies that work best depending upon age and this is a very important aspect of child care that every provider should be an expert in .
Students will also learn how to teach and work with special needs children. Although more complicated strategies and skills are taught to those that specifically work special needs, care providers should be familiar with the fundamentals in case there is a need to care for one of these children.
Students will also learn the basics of reading and writing for children, so that they can begin to teach these skills and nurture them in the proper way, to work with educational programs and public or private school curriculum.