A childcare worker supervises and cares for young children in a daycare center: keeping them safe and supervised, running the day's activities, teaching early skills, handling care routines like diapering and meals, keeping a record of each child's day, and communicating with families.
This page breaks those duties down — the core list, the day from arrival to pick-up, what you own versus other staff, a sample job description, and how to put the duties on a resume.
What does a childcare worker do? The short answer
The short answer: a childcare worker keeps young children safe, cared for and busy learning through the day.
The job runs on five duty areas — care routines, teaching, supervision, records and family communication — and the sections below unpack the list from every direction: the tasks inside each area, the day's arc from arrival to pick-up, what belongs to you versus the rest of the room, a sample job description, and the duty list rewritten as resume bullets.
Childcare worker is also the occupation's name in the federal Standard Occupational Classification (SOC 39-9011), and the umbrella holds more titles than one posting suggests.
O*NET lists 'Daycare Teacher', 'Infant Teacher' and 'Toddler Teacher' among the reported job titles for childcare workers — and lists 'Infant Teacher' and 'Toddler Teacher' again under preschool teachers (SOC 25-2011), alongside 'Pre-Kindergarten Teacher' and 'Montessori Preschool Teacher'.
The same classroom title can land in either occupation, which is why this page draws on both federal task lists: the childcare-worker list carries the care routines, records and family contact, and the preschool-teacher list carries the skill teaching.
What the title never changes is the center of the job: watching the room, caring for the children in it, and keeping the adults who drop them off and pick them up informed.
For the role itself — the settings, requirements and pay — the childcare worker career guide covers the full picture.
This page stays on the duties.
Core childcare worker duties: care, teaching, supervision, records, family communication
Five duty areas cover the job, and the federal task lists name the concrete tasks inside each one.
- Care routines. Dressing children, changing diapers and sanitizing toys are named tasks on O*NET's childcare worker list (39-9011), and serving meals and snacks according to nutritional guidelines is on the preschool-teacher list (25-2011). Which of these fills a given day depends on the age group the room serves.
- Teaching. The preschool-teacher task list names teaching basic skills — color, shape, number and letter recognition, personal hygiene, and social skills. How a center delivers that teaching varies; this page shows it threaded through play, circle time and planned activities rather than pulled out as a separate lesson block.
- Supervision. Watching the children runs through care routines, meals, play and every transition, indoors and outside.
- Records. Keeping records on individual children — daily observations and information about activities, meals served, and medications administered — is a named childcare worker task, and the preschool-teacher list adds maintaining student records.
- Family communication. Communicating with parents about daily activities and behaviors sits on the childcare worker task list, and the preschool-teacher list adds meeting with parents about children's progress. The handoff at pick-up is this duty in its most visible form.
Underneath the five sits one physical reality.
In O*NET's work-context data, 83% of childcare workers reported constant contact with others, and 51% reported working very close to others — near touching.
A duties list reads like a set of tasks; the work-context numbers are a reminder that, for most of the occupation, those tasks are done in constant contact with other people.
The skills list says the same thing in another form.
O*NET names monitoring, active listening, critical thinking, speaking, active learning, learning strategies, reading comprehension and writing as essential skills for childcare workers: listening and speaking carry the conversations with children and families, and reading and writing carry the records.
Childcare worker duties across the day: arrival to pick-up
The duty list repeats every day, but where the hours fall depends on the center.
BLS notes that childcare centers are usually open year round with long hours, and that some centers cover the whole day with full-time and part-time staff on staggered shifts.
BLS also describes part-time work and irregular hours as common for childcare workers — your shift may hold only part of the arc below.
With that caveat, this is the shape of a full-day classroom from arrival to pick-up:
- Opening the room. Set out the day's materials, check the plan, and get the room ready before the first children arrive.
- Arrival and drop-off. Greet each child, take the handoff from the dropping-off adult, and note anything the family flags — the family-communication duty starts here, not at pick-up.
- Morning play and activity blocks. Run the planned activities and thread the basic-skills teaching — colors, shapes, numbers, letters, hygiene, social skills — through play, circle time and learning centers.
- Meals and snacks. Serve meals and snacks according to nutritional guidelines, help younger children at the table, and record what was served.
- Care routines through the day. Diapering and dressing as needed with younger children, plus handwashing and the hygiene habits on the teaching list as children take the routines over themselves.
- Rest time. Supervision continues while children sleep — and this is the natural window for writing up the day's observation notes while they're fresh.
- Outdoor play. Take the class outside and hold the same close watch in a bigger, louder space.
- Pick-up and the handoff. Give each family a picture of the day — activities, behavior, meals — and pass anything the next adult on shift should know.
- After pick-up. Sanitize toys, reset the room, and set up for tomorrow.
On a staggered-shift schedule, the same arc is split across more adults — one teacher may own the morning while a second covers the afternoon through close.
Before you accept an offer, ask exactly which hours you'd hold: the shift decides which parts of this list you'll actually carry.
What is a childcare worker responsible for vs other staff in the room?
Where a room has more than one adult, the duties split by title:
- Lead teacher. Carries the room: the plan for the day, the activities on the shelves, each child's record and the family conversations. Lead-teacher titles straddle the two federal occupations — the daycare teacher duties page breaks that role down in full.
- Assistant teachers and aides. Support the lead — preparing materials, sharing care routines, helping at meals, and adding a second pair of eyes for supervision. In federal statistics, childcare-center assistant teachers are usually counted as childcare workers (39-9011), the occupation this page describes.
- Floaters. Have no home room; they move wherever coverage is short and take on the duties of whichever room they join for that stretch.
- Director and assistant director. Carry the program-level work — enrollment, staffing, tuition and the license — which sits outside a classroom role's job.
- Cooks and drivers. Separate roles where a center has them: the kitchen and the van are not the classroom's duties.
What is not on a childcare worker's plate: setting the staffing schedule, enrolling children, setting tuition, hiring, and the center's license filings.
Whether you plan the curriculum or deliver someone else's plan depends on the title the center hired you under — assistant and aide titles support a lead's plan rather than own it.
One vocabulary trap worth knowing: 'teacher assistant' and 'paraprofessional' mean something specific in school data.
O*NET lists 'Preschool Aide', 'Teacher Aide', 'Paraprofessional' and 'Paraeducator' under the teaching-assistant occupation (25-9042) — a category BLS reports as 72% local elementary and secondary school staff — so a school posting under those titles describes a different employer than a center posting does.
In childcare, the center's job description and its state's licensing rules are what shape an aide's duties.
Supervision rules come from your state child care licensing agency
Sample childcare worker job description
A childcare worker job description is assembled from a few parts — a position summary, a duty list, qualifications, a schedule, and pay.
The sample below fills that shape with the duties described on this page, so you can lay a real posting against it: the closer its duty list is to this one, the closer the job is to the role described here.
Position summary
[Center name] is hiring a childcare worker for our [age group] classroom.
The childcare worker supervises and cares for children throughout the day, leads activities that build early skills, and keeps families informed.
This role works alongside the classroom team and reports to the center director.
Duties
- Supervise children indoors and outdoors throughout the day.
- Lead daily activities that build early skills — colors, shapes, numbers, letters, personal hygiene and social skills.
- Carry out care routines for the age group: dressing, diapering and handwashing.
- Serve meals and snacks according to nutritional guidelines.
- Keep a daily record for each child covering observations, activities, meals served and medications administered.
- Communicate with parents about children's daily activities and behavior.
- Sanitize toys and keep the classroom clean and ready for the next day.
Qualifications
[Education, credential and experience requirements.] For the occupation overall, BLS lists a high school diploma or equivalent as the typical entry-level education — a statistical label, and it notes education requirements vary: some states require a diploma or equivalent for entry-level positions, while others have no education requirement.
BLS also notes that to qualify for licensure, childcare staff often must pass a background check, have a complete record of immunizations and meet a minimum training requirement, and some states require CPR and first aid certification.
Your state's child care licensing agency sets the qualifications that actually apply to the job, so read this section of a posting against your state's current rules.
Schedule
[Hours and days.] Childcare centers are usually open year round with long hours, and some cover the whole day with staggered full-time and part-time shifts; part-time work and irregular hours are common in the occupation.
The hours lines may be the most consequential ones in the posting.
Compensation
[Pay and benefits.] A posting lists the center's own offer; the occupation-wide benchmarks sit on our childcare worker salary page.
Read a posting by its duty list: it tells you the age group, how much documentation the center expects, whether families get daily updates, and how the day splits between teaching and care.
What the posting leaves out is fair game at the interview.
Writing one of these rather than reading one?
The employer's process — screening, interviews, offers — runs through hiring a childcare worker.
Childcare worker duties for a resume
Resume bullets earn their place when they name the task, the age group and the result, in the words the job itself uses.
The five duty areas above are that vocabulary.
Sample bullets built from the federal task lists — swap in your own age group and details:
- Supervised and cared for children in a [age group] classroom, indoors and outdoors, from arrival to pick-up.
- Taught early skills — colors, shapes, numbers, letters and social skills — through daily play-based activities.
- Kept a daily record for each child covering observations, activities, meals served and medications administered.
- Served meals and snacks according to nutritional guidelines.
- Communicated with parents about children's daily activities and behavior at drop-off and pick-up.
- Lead with duty verbs the job actually uses — supervised, taught, served, recorded, communicated — instead of a generic 'responsible for'.
- Name your age group in every entry; an infant-room records bullet and a pre-K teaching bullet describe different jobs.
- Include records and family communication, not just teaching — both are named tasks in the federal lists for this occupation, and both are duties you'd carry in the room.
- Add a skills line in the field's own terms: monitoring, active listening, critical thinking, speaking, active learning, learning strategies, reading comprehension and writing are O*NET's essential skills for childcare workers.
- Quantify only with numbers you can defend in an interview — the children in your charge, the records you kept, the reports you sent home.
When the bullets are in, mirror each posting's duty list before you apply — the match becomes easy for a director to see.
When you're ready to send applications, the childcare worker jobs board lists early-education openings at centers and schools.