I started out trying to contain my program to the basement as well accept for lunch but over the years it just became 'easier' to have a nice long afternoon nap time that is often closer to 3 hours by allowing them to have their own space upstairs in the individual bedrooms cause dealing with the inconvenience of the cots being stored up there is a small price to pay to not have to be dealing with the fact that when they all slept in the basement I was lucky to get 1.5 hour of quiet time and well even that was not all quiet because the first half hour was spent 'shhing and reminding' children not to whisper at each other and than they only slept about an hour cause they would wake each other up during their natural sleep cycles and start the whispering again instead of falling back to sleep or because I had to bring them up to the main floor for quiet activities the noise travels 'down much easier cause they can hear the feet walking and so forth so even if we were trying to be 'quiet' the sleeping kids would hear ~ now that they sleep upstairs they are not woken by any noise on the main level cause it does not travel upward as easily and I play soothing solitudes and classical music to drown out any noise that might try to travel upward.

I basically use my whole house now ~ we sleep on the upper level, we do meet and greet, eat and do creative art and sensory on my main floor and we have the playroom downstairs with all the toys and other stations .... but I have things organized in cupboards and baskets and closets so that after hours there is minimal 'work' in my face although you cannot get rid of all evidence of course.

As for do you stay on the same floor as them when they are sleeping ~ when I was licensed the recommendation was that there should be no more than 1 floor / door between you and the children during nap time so if I have children sleeping upstairs than I am on my 'main floor' with the monitors on so there is only 1 floor and 1 door between us .... as we wake up we stay on the main floor doing quiet activities until everyone is up so that there is no more than 1 floor / door between us.