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Career Description

Attend to children at schools, businesses, private households, and childcare institutions. Perform a variety of tasks, such as dressing, feeding, bathing and overseeing play.

What Job Titles Childcare Workers Might Have

• Child Care Provider
• Child Care Worker
• Child Caregiver
• Childcare Worker

What Childcare Workers Do

• Maintain a safe play environment.
• Dress children and change diapers.
• Observe and monitor children's play activities.
• Communicate with children's parents or guardians about daily activities, behaviors, and related issues.
• Sanitize toys and play equipment.
• Keep records on individual children, including daily observations and information about activities, meals served, and medications administered.
• Support children's emotional and social development, encouraging understanding of others and positive self-concepts.
• Identify signs of emotional or developmental problems in children and bring them to parents' or guardians' attention.
• Assist in preparing food and serving meals and refreshments to children.
• Instruct children in health and personal habits, such as eating, resting, and toilet habits.
• Create developmentally appropriate lesson plans.
• Read to children and teach them simple painting, drawing, handicrafts, and songs.
• Discipline children and recommend or initiate other measures to control behavior, such as caring for own clothing and picking up toys and books.
• Regulate children's rest periods.
• Perform general administrative tasks, such as taking attendance, editing internal paperwork, and making phone calls.
• Perform housekeeping duties, such as laundry, cleaning, dish washing, and changing of linens.
• Organize and store toys and materials to ensure order in activity areas.
• Organize and participate in recreational activities and outings, such as games and field trips.
• Provide care for mentally disturbed, delinquent, or handicapped children.
• Care for children in institutional setting, such as group homes, nursery schools, private businesses, or schools for the handicapped.
• Operate in-house day-care centers within businesses.
• Perform general personnel functions, such as supervision, training, and scheduling.
• Help children with homework and school work.
• Sterilize bottles and prepare formulas.
• Accompany children to and from school, on outings, and to medical appointments.
• Place or hoist children into baths or pools.

What Childcare Workers Should Be Good At

• Oral Expression - The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
• Oral Comprehension - The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
• Problem Sensitivity - The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing there is a problem.

What Childcare Workers Need to Learn

• Customer and Personal Service - Knowledge of principles and processes for providing customer and personal services. This includes customer needs assessment, meeting quality standards for services, and evaluation of customer satisfaction.
• Psychology - Knowledge of human behavior and performance; individual differences in ability, personality, and interests; learning and motivation; psychological research methods; and the assessment and treatment of behavioral and affective disorders.
• Education and Training - Knowledge of principles and methods for curriculum and training design, teaching and instruction for individuals and groups, and the measurement of training effects.
• English Language - Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.