About 15 minutes away from where I live, there is a poor town with many homeless people. I was driving through the town one day, and I relized that many of these people don’t work because they don’t have anyone to watch their young kids. Daycare is very expensive so I came up with an idea to open a free daycare. I got 20 of my friends to help me sponsor it, and they are amazing. Basically this is what we do.
7:30am – The kids and there famiy arrive at the center. Everyone is served free breakfast.
8:00am – The parents leave for work. The older children are tranfered into there school. The younger kids stay.
8:30am – The children relax for a while. They get to sit down and watch a movie for there age group.
10:00am – This is the time we learn about shapes, numbers, colors, letters, etc in a fun way for their age group.
12:00am – Everyone gets a free lunch in the dining room.
12:30am – Nap time. kids under 2 get a crib and the kids over 2 get a cot.
2:00pm – They get up and we go for a walk.The younger kids have a large stroller and the older ones have this long I guess rope type thing with a bunch of handles for them.
2:30pm – They get to play on the playground and with trikes.
3:30pm – The ‘big kids’ are taken from school to the center. Everyone has a snack in the dining room.
4:00pm – The older kids do their homework while the little kids get to do an easy craft.
4:30pm – Everyone has indoor play time. We have playdough, games, toys, etc.
5:00pm – We have the activity of the day.
6:00pm – The parents come to pick up the kids. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday they get to stay for dinner.
Now in a month we will be opened for 2 years. We decided we should add a new thing. The group agreed that this would be good. Here are the ideas we came up with (we already offer finance and parenting classes).
- We only take kids OVER 6months right now, so someone suggested we open it to all ages.
- Provide a bag for each parent with hygine supplies.
- Offer some jobs for the parents at the center (cleaning, supply manager, assistant, cook, activity manager, etc.)
What are some other ideas?
It is funded by myself, the 20 friends, and a ton of my family. We got the building really cheap! The food is provided by a local resturant. I got all the toys and furnatiure was gotten cheaper and payed for extra by all of us. It is a great thing to do. We also have a ton of fundraisers. We had all the kids get a small white tile and they decorated it and we sold them for like $200 a tile.
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