5 Kids every day

[Spixie33]

Hi everyone....just wanting some input from other DCproviders who do 5 kids every day.

I started 3 years ago and told myself I would not be one of these FULL daycares. I admired that they were able to make a great living but I figured I should stick to 3 kids per day and that would be a comfortable income for me and my sanity.

Well, with time and word-of-mouth...people contacted me asking me to take on their little ones and since it was word-of-mouth I was inclined to say yes and the money started to sound good.

Well....now i have been doing 5 kids a day for a couple of months and am dying. Help. How do you full daycares do it?

I feel like I don't get to spend much one on one with anyone or to work on skills like puzzles with them or teaching as much and sometimes I wonder by Thursday or every week whether they are bored of coming to daycare and seeing the same toys, etc. I feel like I should entertain them somehow. They seem to be happy to come Mon-wed and play with the toys they missed during the weekend but then the end of teh week gets tough.

And doing lunch clean ups and crafts is so much harder with a larger group. I am not sure what I was thinking.

I figured that it would be pretty much the same as doing 4 kids but each child really makes a difference.

How do you keep the full timers interested every day? I don't necessarily want to do crafts every day just to keep them interested.