Example Career: Childcare Workers
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 Worker
- Childcare Provider
- Infant Teacher
- Toddler Teacher
What Childcare Workers Do
- Maintain a safe play environment.
- Observe and monitor children's play activities.
- Communicate with children's parents or guardians about daily activities, behaviors, and related issues.
- Support children's emotional and social development, encouraging understanding of others and positive self-concepts.
- Care for children in institutional setting, such as group homes, nursery schools, private businesses, or schools for people with disabilities.
- Sanitize toys and play equipment.
- Dress children and change diapers.
- Keep records on individual children, including daily observations and information about activities, meals served, and medications administered.
- Identify signs of emotional or developmental problems in children and bring them to parents' or guardians' attention.
- Instruct children in health and personal habits, such as eating, resting, and toilet habits.
- Organize and store toys and materials to ensure order in activity areas.
- Perform general administrative tasks, such as taking attendance, editing internal paperwork, and making phone calls.
- Create developmentally appropriate lesson plans.
- Perform housekeeping duties, such as laundry, cleaning, dish washing, and changing of linens.
- Read to children and teach them simple painting, drawing, handicrafts, and songs.
- Assist in preparing food and serving meals and refreshments to children.
- 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.
- Organize and participate in recreational activities and outings, such as games and field trips.
- Sterilize bottles and prepare formulas.
- Help children with homework and school work.
- Provide care for children with physical, developmental, or mental health disabilities.
- Perform general personnel functions, such as supervision, training, and scheduling.
- Accompany children to and from school, on outings, and to medical appointments.
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.
This page includes information from by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the license.