Education Required for Day Care Managers:
Most of the time, the program that you will want to pursue in order to manage a daycare facility is the Associate of Science in Early Childhood Education. This major includes coursework in a variety of areas related to taking care of children and will give students a foundation for taking care of children from a wide variety of backgrounds and in different age categories. This is a two year program that provides students with skills and theories on teaching and caring for ages from infant to six years old including caring for very young children and building relationships with parents.
Coursework
Nutrition for Children: This will include the preparation of food, and nutritional requirements of children, and information that will allow daycare workers to avoid problems like allergic reactions and other medical problems that result from poor nutritional choices. This is an important part of any daycare center that provides one or more meals for children throughout the day, including how to feed children of different ages, and how to allow for customized meals because of diet, medical needs or religious requirements of the family.
Child Health: This will teach managers and workers in a daycare facility how to care for the physical health of children including naps, and how often they should be implemented or their duration. Also, exercise is a very important part of caring for children, and making sure that they get the proper amount is one of the skills you will learn. Also, caring for sick children will be taught including how to assess and treat colds and other common medical concerns like cuts, scrapes and bruises as well as how to ensure care in less common situations such as broken bones or other emergencies.
Child-Parent Relationships: Students will have to learn the dynamic between children and their parents in order to better serve them. They will learn how these relationships work and prepare themselves to work side-by-side with parents in order to provide the best care possible to their children. This is a vital skill for any child care facility worker to have, but even more important for a manager since they are usually the ones interacting with parents of enrolled children, or prospective parents considering the child care facility for their kids.
Behavior Modification Strategies : No matter how well behaved children are, there will be times that they need behavior modification, and in certain cases, the child’s behavior may be extreme and need serious modification. Learning strategies that will work with different children and that parents will approve of will be some of the skills that prospective child care facility managers will learn, as well as how to supervise and maintain these strategies or how to improve them when necessary. This is one of the most important tasks of a child care facility manager and the caregivers that work there and personnel should be experts in a variety of behavior modification strategies.
Special Needs Instruction: Students may also need to have some skills in working with special needs children, and it is almost certain that any coursework for Early Childhood Education will include some special needs instruction. Although severe special needs children may have their own caregivers, there may be a need for managers and staff members of child care facilities to have at least a basic working knowledge in how to take care of anyone that requires special help. Also, this may help them in alerting parents to possible symptoms that may require to have their child evaluated for special needs instruction or medical concerns such as hyperactivity disorder.
Teaching Basic Skills: Obviously, any students who will be working with children that are preparing to enter school will need to teach basic skills such as reading and writing, and children that learn these basics from a provider in a child care facility may have an advantage when they do enter school. Learning how to teach these skills and nurture a child’s natural curiosity will be part of the skills that are learned in Early Childhood Education coursework, as well as strategies that will allow caregivers to work alongside educational programs and curriculum in public or private schools. This will be a major emphasis on Associate Degree programs, but even moreso if the student is pursuing a Baccalaureate Degree.
First Aid/CPR: Part of the coursework that may be required is learning how to to perform emergency care such as first aid or CPR. This may require a separate course altogether, but sometimes it is included in the Associate Degree program, depending upon your school’s particular policies. This will ensure that caregivers can perform basic tasks like the Heimlich Maneuver, Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and first aid, as well as know how to act in case of an emergency and when to call in paramedics or qualified medical personnel.