Does anyone only look after before/after school kids?

[mlc1982]

Does anyone do this? Does it bring in enough to pay the bills?

[Play and Learn]

Hubby and I are looking into doing this once we have kids of our own (so 1-2 years down the road). It would be paying for our bills if we did this. $20/child/day.

With the busing out in the country, we would have the kids for max 2 hours per day. I find that the kids that I have currently just want to play, and don't want a snack (which saves some more money for us!).

Hours that I'm open is 7:30-5, and I would have the kids between 7:30-8:30, then 4-5. If you have children of your own, it makes sense as you can go and volunteer at your childs school, do your errands, etc. In Ontario, as we're allowed 5 children in our home under the age of 10, it would pay me $100/day - not bad when you think they're not costing you much!

You would also have to decide if you'll take them for P/D Days, holidays, etc. If they come for P/D Days, then the rate goes to $35/day as they're eating and using my supplies - but you would have to mention that in your manual/contract before taking them on! I would be taking the kids on P/D Days as I have teachers children, but not March Break, etc as I have my holidays then!

[Amateur Owner]

I'm starting to look into this...as I find I don't have any time to volunteer at my older son's school. This will also give me more 1 on 1 time with my little one.
Rates I'm thinking of using are monthly - $410 including 1 after school snack. With my current 'after school only' child I charge $335, we also do 2-3 organized activities after school per week, like science experiments, crafts or baking... they play a lot of card games & board games, but now that the weather is getting nicer we spend most of the time outdoors after snack. If the weather is icky outside I do a 'movie day' on Fridays...something usually on TV
For Pro-D days I charge an additional $20

[playfelt]

I found the school age didn't pay enough because they could eat enough at afterschool snack to equal a preschoolers full lunch and still wanted to do activities like crafts, etc. I got where the only ones I took were friends of my own kids as they grew up or kids I had in care I kept some of them as new siblings joined us.

I actually found that my kids thrived on having the daycare kids here when they were little. Once they were into school it would have been nice to have some time off to do stuff in the school with them. One thing to look into is the demand for part time care. So you would have the kids all day but still have some days off so you could volunteer every Thursday or take a yoga class on Friday if you only had kids Mon-Wed. It would pay more than school age and leave your days free with your own kids so that you could get them from school and do acivities. Very important once they get into activities to get them, do homework, meals and still get to dance, music lessons, brownies, whatever.

[mlc1982]

Thanks for the input. Ive been thinking more about p/t or b/a school lately just so I have more time in a day to be able to put my own kids in activities and such. Even just to have some freedom back in my day would be nice. I feel like my own kids are taking a backseat to my daycare kids which totally defeats the purpose of me being home with them. There really is so much to think about when it comes to this child care stuff.

[mom-in-alberta]

I thought about it. In fact, at the beginning of September, my full time spots all cleared out at the same time. (I had 3 in one family, that left!) So I was just doing B/A care. It was admittedly nice to have my day free, that's for sure. However, unless I took in a lot of kids, it wouldn't work for me. Not enough pay, I have 2 of my own that are school age so it takes up "spots", and the bottom line is that I have less patience for dealing with the troubles that school age kids have (maybe it's just the batch of kids I ended up with, lol). I would rather work with toddlers, and have sharing issues, etc.
I hear what you say about your own kids needing to feel more important. I think that is a fine line for us daycare providers. So far I think our own kids are doing okay, but if they ever started to "suffer", then I would absolutely re-evaluate. At the same time, I keep reminding them that it's not easy for the daycare kids all the time, either. You don't think they would rather be at their own home with their own toys and their own parents?? You bet they would!! So it's a give and take around here.
I would totally look into part time, if you think that might work for your budget. I only have 2 full timers, one in school for mornings. I have about 5 or 6 part time, that rotate as per schedules need. It's nice on some days to have less kids, a little bit of a break even. And the money works out to be about the same, because part timers actually pay more on a daily basis.

[Emilys4Guppies]

Around here a DCP couldn't run on only B/A care because our local school offers it for $7/day. The only time you see a DCP with B/A care is when the school age child has a sibling in fulltime and the parents want to keep them together.

[MeMe]

This is all I do. No full time kids here. For me I needed the same amount of money coming in as EI I receive now on mat leave. Doing only B/A allows me the flexibility to be home with my son, take my daughter to school everyday and still bring in an income.

I had no interest in returning to the corporate world after my son was born. With the cost of daycare and B/A care for my daughter I wouldn't bringing much home after that, not enough to have all the stress of getting to work with 2 kids.

We moved to a new home in a new neighborhood with a brand new school who is introducing full time JK in September. There is a huge demand for B/A care in my area, especially with a neighborhood with lots of shift workers who need the flexibility of care. Some weeks they are both before and after, some weeks they are only afterschool.

[apples and bananas]

I'm considering this as well. I too would have to run about 20 per day. The schools in my area offer similar programs for 19.50 per day so I'd have to either, charge less or open extra hours and work on the market that leaves for work super early or get home after 6. Neither which I'd like to do... LOL

I will be bridging into a family business in the next 5 years and need to have a plan to pay the bills and do some work there. the full day with kids in school would give me enough time. It's hard to start my day at 6am though.

[playfelt]

Around here you would be able to charge the same as the school if not a bit more just because there are not enough spaces in the school based programs for all of the kids that need it. The one down side though is that if they are on a wait list and get a place at the last minute they will be gone complete with whines over payment since they have no choice but to move and start paying right away or lose the space.