What do you charge for after school children?

[StrawberryMartini]

I may have one 8 year old 3-5pm just on Wednesdays. I charge £4 per hour, but it seems pointless to charge £8 a week. Do you charge more than your hourly rate if you've just got a child for a short space of time? I was thinking of rounding it up to £10.

(I know it's Sunday but I said I'd ring the mum to confirm today, so TIA .)

My cm charges £3.75 for 1st child and £3.25 for siblings. She only had my kids 1 day a week, but since ds1 started school I have changed my hours and she only has him in the holidays. BUT she was just going to charge the 1.5hrs she would have him (before school) at the £3.25ph. Does it make a difference that I was paying her more because of ds2? I don't think so.
If my child was only going for 2 hours I would only want to pay the £8, if you can fill your spaces for longer and so earn more you don't take the 2 hour child.

as a parent i agree with CS, but I do know my CM friend has a £13 minumum charge per day! Not sure how she does it but the other lady does it with minimum £12 as they only charge £3 per hour. I charge £3.50 but have a two hour minumum. you do need to make it worth while tho, everytime you do paperwork or send out newsletter or take child to play area then you may find you are losing money.

I have one contract at two hour minumum some days, swimmimg, soft play( where you can only eat their food etc) and I do often end up NOT making ANY money from caring for that child that day, and as it is only some days I mind that child sometime weeks i technically look after her for free!
so perhaps if you need to only charge for hours you car for her then you could do special terms of extras for trips even tho you may usually include this in your flat rate

have to say I would not expect my cm to have my child for 2 hours after school and in that time take him to a play place and have to pay that cost, or external food costs. The park on the way home - yes (free), but not anything else.
although re-reading that maybe the trips are for a younger child?
have also NEVER had a newsletter!

Our childminder charges £5 an hour for each of our children, so £10 an hour for both. I can't see why it should make a difference if it's £8 or £10. If it's the change that's the bother, then ask her if she can give it to you in the right change.

I guess everyone Cms in a different manner. we go swimming sfter school once a week(whilst two are at swim lessons so no ratios issues), soft play usually once a week and sometimes costly craft activities on a regular basis. I take all ages to all activities so I personally find that as a percentage I earn far less for my after school wages than i do during school hours as I do not just save the expensive activities for when most kids are not there, in fact I often wait until the days they are all there so they do not miss out

Strawbs - I was going to ask the same question but more for BEFORE school (I'll start a new thread though).

This is what I'd do if I got the same enquiry.......if they'd been under 8 years old, I would explain to them that taking a child one for one day in the middle of the week would make it very difficult to fill the other after school vacancies (true!) and therefore I couldn't afford to take on that job. Then if they were desperate, I'd look at negociating a rate we were both happy with (as tbh, in my area they would struggle to get another cm to do that one day for the same reasons - most of the enquiries are for full week or for more days than the 2 days available at either side of the Wednesday iyswim). HOWEVER.....as this child is aged 8, they are not affecting your numbers and therefore I would not feel I could justify charging more as they are not stopping me taking on more business. The way I've always run my business is to look at it from a 'am I loosing out' perspective. I.e. someone could call me now about starting in Dec (if I had a vacancy that is). In theory I could charge a retainer to save the space but I'd only charge it IF I was turning work away, if no-one else was asking about that space anyway then I wouldn't charge as I'm not loosing out. I don't charge just to take advantage of the extra money.

HTH BTW, is this the one who might mean you need this booster?

Cool thanks everyone. I think I'll stick to the £8. I think it's definitely in my interest to take him - he'll entertain the younger children.

Thanks for your help once again - even on a Sunday!

p.s. I totally disagree about that age group being less work than toddlers and babies, I think it really depends. I'd say that I always found that age group MUCH MUCH HARDER and that's why I stopped advertising for over 5's until more recently

i charge the same as all my others £2.50 an hour