As more families shift to both parents working outside the home, the demand for high-quality child care continues to rise. So how can child-care leaders and entrepreneurs meet this growing need? How do you set up something as complicated as a child-care center? The list of books below will walk you through planning, launching, and running a high-quality child-care business that provides a healthy, safe environment for children. These books address key, real-world topics such as financial planning and management, marketing and public relations, recruiting and hiring, organization culture, professional development, and common issues like high-turnover and discipline policies.
The Basics of Leading a Child-Care Business
This book, the second book in The Business of Child Care Series, explains how to develop and lead a high-quality program where children can play and learn in the care of a well-educated, committed, and trained workforce. Entrepreneurial expert Marnie Forestieri, CDA, explores key topics in leadership like high turnover, organization culture, team-building, and professional development.
The Basics of Starting a Child-Care Business
The first book in The Business of Child Care series walks readers through each step of planning, developing, and launching their own child-care business whether joining an established franchise, creating an on-site center at your office, or hosting a program in your home.
Family Child Care Basics
Advice, Activities, and Information to Create a Professional Program
From creating a healthy, safe environment for children to developing engaging activities that can be used to shape daily plans, this books provides in-home child-care expert advice on how to plan and implement a program where children will learn, play, and thrive.
The Practical Guide to Quality Child Care
This uniquely comprehensive manual is a clear, easy-to-read handbook that provides specific guidelines for virtually every aspect of early childhood administration including management techniques, financial management, public relations, personnel policies and procedures, sample forms and newsletters, new employee packets, and more!
America’s Child-Care Crisis
Rethinking an Essential Business
America’s Child-Care Crisis takes a hard look at the current state of the child-care industry and explores how to save this critical service by identifying the systemic changes needed, altering public opinion of the field, securing state and federal dollars for the private sector, prioritizing the growth of family child-care homes, educating parents on quality care and helping them access it, and obtaining business support.
Solutions for Early Childhood Directors
Real Answers to Everyday Challenges
This book provides real-world answers for directors who work in the challenging yet rewarding field of early childhood education. Addressing key issues such as training staff, handling discipline, dealing with parents, and creating partnerships in the community, Solutions for Early Childhood Directors is the ultimate "can't-do-without-it" survival kit.
The Early Childhood Director’s Guide to Solving Everyday Challenges
Coming Soon! The Early Childhood Director’s Guide to Solving Everyday Challenges examines real-world issues experienced at actual child-care centers. Discover how to avoid mistakes, oversights, and incidents as much as possible by developing policies and procedures and by implementing staff training to reduce risk. Follow the practical steps provided to create a plan so you are prepared to address issues if they do occur.
Building on Whole Leadership
Energizing and Strengthening Your Early Childhood Program
Using the Whole Leadership Framework, developed by the McCormick Center for Early Childhood Leadership, this book helps early childhood professionals inspire their staff's collaboration, creativity, and ethical commitment.
Inspiring Professional Growth
Empowering Strategies to Lead, Motivate, and Engage Early Childhood Teachers
This book provides early childhood leaders with the tools to nurture and empower their teaching staff throughout their careers. When teachers feel supported and empowered to grow their own skills, your program will thrive!
Growing Together
Developing and Sustaining a Community of Practice in Early Childhood
Growing Together helps early childhood educators define, create, and promote a community of practice (CoP) to foster collaborative problem solving and enhance professional learning experiences.
Build Your Dream Team
How to Recruit, Train, and Retain Early Childhood Staff
Recruiting and maintaining the right staff is a huge challenge in the early childhood industry. Build Your Dream Team suggests that recruiting is an ongoing process, and guides early childhood leaders in crafting a solid plan for recruiting, hiring, onboarding, and nurturing your staff.
Inspiring Early Childhood Leadership
Eight Strategies to Ignite Passion and Transform Program Quality
Inspiring Early Childhood Leadership lays out strategies designed to support program leaders in finding new ways to reduce the levels of stress on themselves and their staff, and move into a unified, engaging system for leading with passion, intention, and purpose.
Lose the Lecture
Engaging Approaches to Early Childhood Professional Learning
Lose the Lecture brings administrators, coaches, and facilitators a new approach to professional development and adult learning that focuses on the learners—how they think, what they need, and what motivates them to grow.
Focus on Babies
How-tos and What-to-dos when Caring for Infants
Complete with tips for creating a developmentally appropriate environment and experiences that stimulate infants’ muscles and minds, Focus on Babies gives you the tools to craft a quality learning environment that’s as unique as the needs of the babies in your care.
Focus on Toddlers
How-tos and What-to-dos when Caring for Toddlers and Twos
This book explains how to structure a program where toddlers and two-year-olds can learn, play, and thrive.
100 Ideas to Market Your Childcare Business
Create your own marketing campaigns to promote your program and increase enrollment. Offering both simple ideas and more complex promotions, this book will inspire any early childhood professional to create the perfect marketing strategy with just a little time and effort.