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

  • 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 the handicapped.
  • 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 mentally disturbed, delinquent, or handicapped children.
  • Operate in-house day-care centers within businesses.
  • Perform general personnel functions, such as supervision, training, and scheduling.
  • Accompany children to and from school, on outings, and to medical appointments.
Work Context
  • Contact With Others — 84% responded "Constant contact with others".
  • Face-to-Face Discussions — 82% responded "Every day".
  • Work With Work Group or Team — 66% responded "Extremely important".
  • Physical Proximity — 52% responded "Very close (near touching)".
  • Indoors, Environmentally Controlled — 78% responded "Every day".
  • Structured versus Unstructured Work — 43% responded "Some freedom".
  • Freedom to Make Decisions — 54% responded "Some freedom".
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Work Activities
  • Assisting and Caring for Others — Providing personal assistance, medical attention, emotional support, or other personal care to others such as coworkers, customers, or patients.
  • Making Decisions and Solving Problems — Analyzing information and evaluating results to choose the best solution and solve problems.
  • Thinking Creatively — Developing, designing, or creating new applications, ideas, relationships, systems, or products, including artistic contributions.
  • Communicating with Supervisors, Peers, or Subordinates — Providing information to supervisors, co-workers, and subordinates by telephone, in written form, e-mail, or in person.
  • Getting Information — Observing, receiving, and otherwise obtaining information from all relevant sources.
  • Resolving Conflicts and Negotiating with Others — Handling complaints, settling disputes, and resolving grievances and conflicts, or otherwise negotiating with others.
  • Organizing, Planning, and Prioritizing Work — Developing specific goals and plans to prioritize, organize, and accomplish your work.
  • Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships — Developing constructive and cooperative working relationships with others, and maintaining them over time.
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Detailed Work Activities
  • Arrange childcare or educational settings to ensure physical safety of children.
  • Discuss child development and behavior with parents or guardians.
  • Prepare foods or meals.
  • Develop educational or training programs.
  • Develop daily schedules for children or families.
  • Perform administrative or clerical tasks.
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Knowledge

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.
English Language
  • Knowledge of the structure and content of the English language including the meaning and spelling of words, rules of composition, and grammar.
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.
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Skills

Monitoring
  • Monitoring/Assessing performance of yourself, other individuals, or organizations to make improvements or take corrective action.
Service Orientation
  • Actively looking for ways to help people.
Social Perceptiveness
  • Being aware of others' reactions and understanding why they react as they do.
Active Listening
  • Giving full attention to what other people are saying, taking time to understand the points being made, asking questions as appropriate, and not interrupting at inappropriate times.
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Abilities

Oral Comprehension
  • The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
Oral Expression
  • The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
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.
Speech Recognition
  • The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
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Personality

People interested in this work like activities that include ideas, thinking, and figuring things out.
They do well at jobs that need:
  • Achievement/Effort
  • Persistence
  • Initiative
  • Leadership
  • Cooperation
  • Concern for Others
  • Social Orientation
  • Self Control
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Technology

You might use software like this on the job:

Word processing software
  • Microsoft Word Hot Technology
Computer based training software
  • Educational software
  • Schoology
Project management software
  • Google Classroom
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