This maybe too short notice for this year as National children’s day is 1st August, but might be worth thinking about for next year. Using National children’s day to promote your business  must be a good thing, surely?

When I was a child minder the National child minding association (N.C.M.A.)  held a National child minding week each June, myself and a few other local child minders would get together and organise an event, or two.

We got permission from the council to have a teddy bear’s picnic in our local park.

All the child minding children brought along a teddy bear or favourite cuddly toy, as did we.

I managed to borrow a banner which we taped to a fence from Devon child minding association (D.C.M.A.) which advertised the fact that we were child minders we also gave out stickers and balloons to other children and adults who were in the park.

Another time we took part in the Bernardo’s toddle waddle

, which raised money for this worthwhile charity and gave us some free advertising as we were mentioned in the local paper.

I also worked at the Children’s centre as a support child minder and would often give out freebies from D.C.M.A. at public events (my manager was more than happy with this as promoting child minding was a large part of my job description).

Taking part in the local carnival was something that we often thought about, but never actually managed to achieve. We were going to dress up

 

and walk along with the procession giving out freebies and flyers rather than going to the expense of hiring a lorry and creating a carnival float

When I was awarded an Outstanding Ofsted grade at my inspection I  contacted the local paper as I had previously seen articles about nurseries who had achieved the same . However I was told that they didn’t feature individual child minders only schools, nurseries and pre schools. Devon early years did mention and put a photograph of me in their newsletter though.

If you put your thinking cap on there are several ways of promoting your early years settings either alone or with a group of other practitioners.

I would love to hear about what others have done.

As always questions/comments are welcome and feel free to share on social media if you think others would like to read this.

Until next time.

Karen

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