holiday childcare idea - opinions please.

[choccybarplease]

Hello everyone!
I am a primary school teacher, thinking of resigning to set up independent projects including after school clubs and school holiday art workshops. My first workshop would be in oil painting, with up to 5 children based in my own home, aimed at 9-12 year olds. Any mums out there with children of this age, who use childcare during school holidays, what would your thoughts be on this? Thanks.

To be childcare it would need to be maybe 8am-6pm. That's a lot of oil painting.

My DC have done art workshops in the holidays, but they're usually 2/3 hours long, so not enough to cover a day at work.

It could work as an afterschool club though, particularly for children in the 11-14 age range who are old enough to come home by themselves, but maybe not old/mature enough to be home alone for hours on end.

As above, that's a lot of painting if it's going to fill a whole day!

Thanks, both. I was planning on running morning or afternoon workshops of 3/4 hours at a cost of £5 an hour for 'proper' teaching. I have other ideas too, including combining creative writing with artwork.

3 or 4 hours isn't enough to function as effective childcare for most working people so I think you'd be really restricting your market. And at 5 quid an hour that's a really expensive activity.

I actually prefer shorter activities, I generally don't need full-time holiday care, so often its just an activity for the children. Both my older DS's are quite arty (and I am very very un-arty - at 4, DS2 told me my octopus looked like a frog).

I prefer ones that start at 10am as I don't want to get up early in the school holidays...so 10-12.30 activities are best.

In our area mini-mozarts have tagged along to another activity I think its playball. So the children do playball in the morning and then mini-mozarts in the afternoon. I may be worth thinking about doing something like that too.

I really wouldn't resign unless you don't actually need the money.
I don't think it sounds like anything other than a bit of extra money running on weekends. Sorry.
For that age group there are lots of holiday clubs that charge £25 for a full day so I think it's unlikely people would pay £20 for 4 hours then have to sort something oout for the rest of the day.
If it's for childcare, who will bring the child to the session and collect them again if the parent is working?
As an after school club, again, who willb bring the children to you. would you do school collections from lots of schools? Doesn't sound feasible

I work part time, so actually don't need to match a full time wage. The after school clubs would be aimed at children who want to attend a club run at their school as opposed to a wrap around childcare set up.

For me most holiday clubs are no good precisely because they are only morning or afternoon. Could you run a full day with other activities/down time around the painting?

I would use half day classes during holidays. We are lucky though that grandparents can help out too, so I drop off to them and they take dcs to various classes throughout the summer, means the kids get to try out fun activities and no one gets too tired.

Cost sounds good too, and in line with what's charged here.

DD is very arty, but I would find this too expensive to do on a regular basis.

Any afterschool clubs she does are usually £5, and last for just one hour. Any longer would be too much, with school, and homework on top.

Would you consider going to schools as an afterschool teacher and doing larger groups for shorter sessions?

If you charged £7.00 for a 1 1/2 hour session at a school, for a group of 10 students = £70

5 children for 3 hours at £5 per hour = £75, however you aren't using your home, therefore less outgoings.

I agree with the other posts about holiday clubs, this just wouldn't be long enough for me to enable me to work, however you could maybe approach existing holiday clubs about running sessions within their curriculum.

Hmm, I agree that morning or afternoon sessions during the holidays wouldn't really work for people who need childcare. They might be ok for parents who are at home and want fun activities for their kids to do during the holidays though. If you did whole days, I think you'd have to factor in a bit more variety - a day of oil painting sounds quite full on for a young child.

£5 per hour would be very expensive around here in comparison to other activities, but I've paid similar in the past for activities that are really well run and professional. I'd expect it to be very high quality at that price, with all materials included.

After school clubs wouldn't work here at all, as we have fantastic provision within the school that is all free of charge, but I know that isn't the case everywhere.

Agree with previous comments. I have a 9yr old arty DD who would absolutely love to do oil painting - in a small group, so its a great idea, but I think it might be difficult to make it pay. I don't think £20 for a 3 or 4 hour session is too bad - but it would have to be as a one-off; not something I would use more than once per holiday at that price. I certainly wouldn't think of it as a "holiday club".

That surely defeats the purpose though, unless you can cover a very large area and can find enough children to do it as a one-off (rather than every day of the hols for instance) to make it pay.

There are several activity based holiday clubs (rather than normal after school clubs that run holiday clubs) that operate 10-3pm here (which can work for some parents) but they are usually £15 per day. I could do a week's worth of that (so say around £75 for the week).

YY to oil painting as a one-off activity only - unless dc are really into it, a half-day session would be enough. A week with different activities each day might work ok though.

Oh, and my dd would love to do a creative writing workshop if it was done well, but it would have to be a bit different from what they do in school.

If you work part-time - and as a teacher presumably have a lot of the school holidays off too - then you really don't need to resign to get started with this.

The general advice when starting a business is to keep a separate salary coming in for as long as possible, and to avoid unnecessary costs (like permanent space) for as long as possible. It can take a while to get the formula right before you start making money, and you need to be able to keep going.

And at the risk of sounding harsh, if you don't have the energy/inclination to do this on top of your day job, then your chances of succeeding in a new business are slim.

well it's up and running! I've 12 bookings for workshops at Easter, in my studio at home. Got public liability, website, facebook page (smARTsy). And have started an after school club in my local primary - 20 children after school. Very pleased. Thanks for all your helpful comments.

Well done. Good luck.

Fantastic - wishing you all the best!