5 Daycare Industry Niches to Differentiate From Your Competitors

To be successful in any business, you must have a niche in your industry. Daycares can have more than just full-time hours to accommodate parents’ work schedules and serve the general populace of children. Find a special service to offer in your daycare curriculum to keep it interesting for parents and children.

Here are 5 daycare industry niches to differentiate from your competitors.

1. Part-time child care centers.
2. Religion based curriculum daycares.
3. Home economics daycare.
4. Sports daycare.
5. Infants only child care center.

A niche instills trust amongst the parents enrolling their children at your facility that you have a specialization unmatched by other general daycare providers. The niche may also not be as popular in your area which is also a win-win for your facility drumming up business.

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   Part-Time Daycare

Not all parents work the normal 9-5 job. With advances in modern technology, work remotely and homeschooling has become more popular recently.

Some parents that work from home and/or homeschool their children need time to run their errands just as adults or to have a date night to recharge. Kids have many needs, can get bored quickly, and it’s difficult for them to stay focused on one task for a very long time. This results in parents almost losing their minds when their children are coming to them every 5 minutes with a problem or if they desire a change of activity.

While you can still run your daycare with a full-time schedule, section off your daycare for parents who only need childcare for 1-4 hours at a time. You can charge an hourly rate based on the child’s age. For example, you can charge

Running a part-time daycare can tap into a whole other target market that not as many daycares do in the suburbs. This niche is more popular in heavily populated cities, but if you are operating in a suburb location, try it out and see how your clients respond.

2. Religion Based Curriculum Daycares

Whether your clients are Catholic, Christian, or Muslim, you could run a religion based daycare that helps parents to feel rest assured that you are teaching them their desired religious values within your core curriculum.

Before considering a religion based daycare, analyze the demographics to see which religious group is more popular in your area of business. Be sure that the religious theme you choose lines up with your religious values, too. Hire staff with the same views and values for a cohesive daycare community where everyone shares the same religious beliefs.

A good rule of thumb for running a religion based curriculum daycare is to specify the religious faith in your name and in your company description. This will ensure that parents of a different faith do not attempt to enroll their children into your daycare that does not line up with their religious values.

It is not discriminatory to run a daycare specifically for children of a certain religious faith. Think of Catholic schools and how they are for children of the Catholic faith. As long as you operate your facility with non-discriminatory intent, you can succeed in this niche.

3. Home Economics Daycare

Remember home economics class in your school district back then? Many school districts throughout the United States have phased out home economics classes due to funding cuts. This is detrimental to the general populace of kids that may not get the home economics guidance they need at home for whatever reason.

Open a home economics themed daycare where the activities are based on what the kids could be doing at home. Activities could be learning to cook and bake, fold clothes, organize toys, learning routines, and how to balance responsibilities with free time. Children attending a home economics daycare is positive reinforcement on them helping out more with chores at home to become responsible adults in the future.

For the little ones, assist them as the class bakes cookies. For older children, collect hand me down clothes donated from parents to have a class on folding clothing. Children of any age can learn how to pick up and organize toys as they clean up from play time. All home economics subjects can be incorporated into age appropriate activities.

4. Sports Daycare

If you are a sports-oriented person, you will enjoy running a sports daycare. While you can incorporate some general free time play with toys in your routine, most of the activities can be sports based.

Theme each week to learn or review a new sport such as baseball, basketball, golf, criquet, and more. Take each day to work on stretching exercises, training, drills, and friendly team competitions to improve the knowledge and proficiency amongst all the children in that specific sport.

Here are some suggestions for class lessons on sports in general.

• Teach a history lesson about the sport.
• Let the children learn about notable world figures in each national or international sport.
• Teach the mechanics of the baseball game.
  • Perform drills for each mechanic.
  • Once all mechanics are learned, practice a game.
• Play a competitive game outside or at a local gym.
• For a half hour one day per week, let children play a video game about the sport for a different experience learning about it.
• Have the children watch YouTube tutorials before you do exercises with them so that they have another way to learn about the sport beforehand.

5. Infants Only Childcare

Most daycares are for infants aged 3-6 months up to children aged 5. What if you tried running an infants only daycare? Specializing in just caring for infants up to age 1 makes your business a specialized facility where parents could trust you even more for your expertise in infant care.

It can be challenging to run an infants only daycare because they have many more needs than toddlers. Between diaper changes, burping, multiple nap periods, and trying to incorporate play and tummy time amongst it all, providing strictly infant care services is rewarding and time consuming simultaneously.

You must have properly trained teachers and aides to assist in the providing proper infant care. Teachers should have an Early Childhood Development degree with a few years of hands-on infant care experience. Aides can be studying for their Early Childhood Development while working at your daycare. They may have received hands-on experience from caring for infants who are siblings, cousins, or friends of the family.

If it is an aide’s first job and/or experience caring for infants, give them a chance working for your facility to gain valuable work experience for their career. Be sure to have the new aide shadow a well-trained teacher or aide to learn the basics of infant care and apply it to the work environment.

Conclusion

Finding your niche to incorporate into your daycare’s curriculum will set you apart from your competition. You do not have to just run the normal daycare center with just the same old early childhood curriculum that every parent expects.

While you must still do this to be sure that the children learn everything they must know for proper development, capitalize on a niche that other daycares are not doing in your area. This will increase your enrollment rates, enforce a positive learning experience for the children, and cause the parents to be even more satisfied with the child care services you are providing.

Related Questions

• What are other niches I can capitalize on in my daycare?

Other niches you can try for your daycare include:

• Speak and teach another language to the kids.
  • If you specialize in a language, teach it to the kids.
  • Help children who speak Spanish to speak English.
• Art themed child care center.
  • Include more art activities throughout the day.
  • Maybe offer theme days such as Monday being Paint Day, Tuesday as Watercolor Day, Wednesday as Tracing and Sketching Day, and so on.
• Career themed child care center.
  • Teach children different careers throughout the week.
  • Complete activities based on said career activities.
  • Encourage dramatic play of various careers during free play time.
  • Complete group projects related to different careers.
  • Include careers not as talked about such as Homemaker, Work-at-Home Representative, and so on.

• What if I do not have a niche?

If you do not have a niche when you first open your daycare, operate as normal and do the following to help you develop your niche.

• Ponder what you are passionate about.
• Think of how you can incorporate your passion into your daycare curriculum.
• Ask your staff for suggestions.
• Ask the parents what they want their children to learn at your daycare. Whatever subject comes up the most, see if you can capitalize on that as your niche.
• Once you have decided your niche, split it up into small lessons to make it learnable over an entire school year. There are many subtopics of a subject to help students learn about it in depth.
• Incorporate these small lessons each day into the daycare schedule.

Please note: This blog post is for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Please consult a legal expert to address your specific needs.

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