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Planning the daily layout of a child care center

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Walk through arrival, meals, rest, outdoor play and pickup for each age group. Put the rooms, storage and staff work on the drawing before it goes to the design and licensing reviewers.

## Map the day by group

List the groups the center expects to serve and the activities each needs to support. Record eating, rest, play and other routines as intended uses for discussion. Review the room sizes and layout for each age group with the center's design and licensing team. Keep a separate note of routines that differ between age groups.

Ask staff how supplies move, where personal belongings are kept and how rooms are prepared between activities. Include support functions in the project notes rather than assigning the entire building to classrooms.

## Follow families and staff separately

Sketch arrival and pickup from the property entrance to the relevant rooms. Identify where families interact with staff and where waiting might occur. Ask your design and operational advisers to review supervision, access and other requirements for the intended center.

Draw the staff route too, including storage, breaks, deliveries and housekeeping. The overlap between these journeys often produces useful questions about the placement of support rooms.

## Connect indoors and outdoors

Describe how each group is expected to use outdoor areas and how equipment moves between inside and outside. Include storage and the routine for returning indoors. Have specialists review the requirements instead of treating a covered area as automatically suitable for every activity.

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## Related articles

- [Planning a covered play area for child care](/blog/daycare-covered-play-brief)
- [Child care shell or completed interior?](/blog/daycare-shell-finish-out-scope)

[All articles](/blog)

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