Starting an in Home Preschool......

I don't think a 2 hour time slot is enough time for me as a parent to mess with. It would be a getting child up and moving and ready to go and to the place and then not really enough time to get anything done and then back to pick him/her up. I would go for 2 3 hour time frames myself but that is just me. and your not really giving yourself enough time from 10 - 10:30 to reset yourself up again. you will need time to get stuff put back into place and you are already for the next group of kids. what if a parent is late getting to you to pick up their child. Just a few thoughts. The last poster asking your credentials is a valid point also. If you don't have at the very least an associates in early childhood you can't call your business a preschool. you can call it a daycare w/preschool curriculum but not a preschool.

Daycare and preschool credentials are completely different. You could implement a preschool curriculum, but you really need to be a certified early childhood education teacher to be able to modify the curriculum as needed. Basically, a pre-made curriculum is only a starting point. You must have the educational background to be able to write your own curriculum so that you can meet the learning needs of children you are teaching, as well as a strong background in child development so that you can make proper assessments. A year-long lesson plan is written at the beginning of the year as a goal sheet, and weekly lesson plans are also written that take into consideration the strengths and weaknesses of the children, as well as their individual interests. A really good teacher will rarely have the year long match up with the weekly plans:) If I was paying for a preschool service, I would also want the teacher to be able to professionally articulate the outcomes and strategies on the curriculum, as well as their teaching and guidance philosophy.

I personally would not choose to do three sets of children by myself every day. That would be very difficult to keep up with in lesson planning, unless you were only considering having a very small group at each session, perhaps 3-4 children.

Tuition is about $120 a week for my daughter to attend a state certified, nationally accredited center. She attends 6 hours a day, 5 days a week.

So Sherry is right- without being a certified teacher your business cannot be certified as a preschool. Unless you are planning on hiring teachers that are certified, but even then you would only be able to be the business manager and not the educational director of your own preschool program. An educational director needs at least a Bachelors in the field to meet certification standards. And another point to add about the time in between sessions, is that there would not be enough time to address any concerns parents would have during drop-off/pick-up. But there are all sorts of other titles you can use if you choose to not go the route of becoming certified...you can call it a "learning center" for instance.

You also have to take into consideration that part-day and full-day preschool programs have different guidelines. In my state a part-day program has to be a three-hour session, so you will have to look up what your state requires.

Hope that helps and good luck with your endeavor!

My only question would be are you a certified pre-school teacher? You said you had a day care, but a care license and teaching credentials are very different. If you are certified to teach, than I think it would be a wonderful business. Most pre-schools here run 2 classes, 3 hours each. And each teacher has an assistant teacher, but with small classes that may not be needed (my sons class has 20 kids). As for fee, I can only tell you what we pay. We use the program on the army post, and my son goes 5 days a week, 3 hours a day, and it cost us $238 a month, although there are several pay categories depending on your husbands rank and your own income. We are cat 4 out of 6 cats, with cat 1 being the lowest monthly payment.

I think you are on a good track, but I agree with others about your time frames and ability to call your business a preschool. For me, 2 hours isn't worth it. Basically you would be providing a Mother's Day Out type program. I'm not sure how many similar programs are already in Allen, but you might want to look into that before you sink too much effort (and money) into a new business. Perhaps you could do a class on Monday and Wednesday for 3-4 hours and another one on Tuesday and Thursday in order to get a couple different groups of kids. I hope whatever you decide is wildly successful!!!

Personally I would not bother with such a short day, it is not worth my time as a mother to get my child there, and to turn around go back 2 hours later. My son goes to a certified preschool program in a church near the Plano / Allen border. We pay $425 a month for 5 days a week, 9a-2p. If you really want to do more than 1 group of kids I would at least lengthen the day and only do 2 groups, like a half day program, one from say 8a-11a, and a second one from 1230p-330p.

So I guess you decided to DEFINITELY not watch any children anymore? I live in Allen and am looking for someone to watch my infant that will be born around 7/1/11. It's hard to find someone in our neck of the woods these days!