90+ Childcare Skills For Your Resume (+ Daycare Worker Resume Example!)

It’s no secret that childcare workers have a lot of employment opportunities: From daycares and schools to the homes of families. There will always be a need for those who work with children — and even more so now. 

Ongoing labor shortages across the country are finally forcing public employers to overlook their compensation packages. At the same time, parents are increasingly willing to pay top dollar for skilled private tutoring as many maintain the pandemic-adopted practice of “learning pods” — educating their children in small groups with private tutors. 

The bottom line: whether you’re looking for a  live-in nanny job or a new daycare position, the timing is great. All you need to do is give your job application package a quick refresh. To help you with that, we’ve prepped this list of must-add childcare skills for a resume. 

So What Are Good Skills For Working With Children?

As a childcare worker, you’re helping to raise the next generation of workers and leaders. Therefore, most employers will expect you to have a strong set of communication, mentoring, and behavioral management skills, paired with high emotional intelligence. 

To help children become well-functioning members of society, you’ll need to be able to effectively communicate with your wardens while also keeping your own emotions and behavior in check. 

Here’s how you may want to summarize your childcare/role-modeling experience on a resume: 

“Dedicated and compassionate childcare professional with 5 years of experience working in public and private educational institutions. Certified Montessori practitioner and behavioral therapist, capable of fostering effective social, emotional, and cognitive development through role-modeling activities.”  

5 Groups Of Childcare Skills To Use On Your Resume 

When it comes to analyzing daycare teacher resumes, employers especially pay attention to certain core competencies — communication, instructional, and administrative skills. Most will be looking for childcare experience examples that also demonstrate your soft skills and personality. 

In this post, we’ve created a master list of childcare provider skills for a resume you can swipe to make your resume more impactful! 

Communication Skills

When creating an educator or nanny resume, be sure to highlight your communication skills.

Depending on the role, you may find yourself working with children as young as a couple of months to as old as their early teens. As many will see, children of any age communicate in vastly different ways from adults, and negotiating with them is a separate art. 

Whether you are having to watch an infant for cues that tell you that they are ready for a feeding or diaper change. Or you’re having to listen to a child continuously ramble in strange slang terms, communication and listening are vital parts of the career of a childcare worker. 

Therefore, be sure to mention the following communication skills on your resume:

1. Active listening 
2. Friendliness
3. Patience 
4. Non-verbal communication 
5. Strong written communication
6. Delivering lectures
7. Hosting group classes 
8. Parental communication 
9. Positive reinforcement 
10.  Conflict de-escalation 
11. Cultural sensitivity 
12.  Peer conflict mediation 
13. Constructive feedback 
14. Multilingual communication abilities 

Discover more interpersonal skills examples for your resume. 

Instructional Skills 

Most childcare workers are expected to also provide some form of education to their mentees, even if they aren’t working as K12 educators. Your childcare worker resume is more likely to stand out from the pack if you can present a wide range of instructional skills. 

Instructional skills represent your ability to explain, demonstrate, and discuss various subjects, while also employing different techniques for managing the children’s attention, interest, and information retention levels. 

Great childcare professionals employ a wide range of instructional techniques to empower children to express their es and need better, learn basic cognitive and motoric skills, as well as develop practical skills like talking, reading, and writing. 

Here are several great examples of instructional skills to describe daycare experience on a resume: 

1. Potty training 
2. Kid-friendly physical activities
3. Developmental games
4. Language tutoring
5. Handicrafts 
6. Music and instrument lessons
7. Arts and handicrafts
8. Tutoring in a variety of school subjects
9. Age-appropriate cooking lessons
10. Behavior management 
11. Confidence building 
12. Storytelling and reading sessions 
13. Science and nature-based activities
14. Letters and phonics tutoring 
15.  Movement activities 
16. Cognitive skills development games 
17. Teaching basic life skills 
18. Guided imaginative play 
19.  Educational fields trip supervision 
20. Group circle time facilitation 
21. Vocabulary building and language development 
22. Early literacy skills development 
23. Personal hygiene instructions 
24.  Fine motor skills activities 
25. Hands-on science experiments 

Pro tip: Contextualize Your Daycare Resume Skills 

An impactful daycare worker resume is more than an inventory of your skills. Its goal is to demonstrate how you’re using all your competencies to provide exceptional care levels and drive desired outcomes. 

Therefore, when writing bullet points for work experience entries, make sure to provide extra context for various skills. For example:

“Host daily letters and phonics tutoring sessions. Successful complete alphabet learning with the group within 3 weeks on average. Helped students with speaking difficulties successfully master the sounds “/r/” and /θ/”. 

Administrative Skills 

Helping to care for children requires a lot of careful planning. After all, while children may not exactly crave structure, it does help to reinforce a sense of stability in them. 

Separately, when employed by households, you also need to account for the personal schedules of other household members. Some families also expect their nannies to help with simple admin tasks like budgeting for various activities, coordinating play dates, or helping with afterschool activities management. 

Whereas employment by a childcare institution also assumes active participation in parent-child conferences, occasional field trip planning and supervision, plus a good level of digital literacy skills to work with educational software. 

To stand out among other applicants, show that you can also do the admin side of work effectively. Hence, here are some administrative skills you want to include in your resume: 

1. Schedule management
2. Extra curriculum classes management
3. Organization of weekend trips 
4. Day-to-day schedule planning
5. Child pick-up/drop-off coordination 
6. Development of long-term educational plans 
7. Childcare recordkeeping 
8. Parent report writing 
9. Safety inspections
10. Budgeting and expense management 
11. Supplies ordering and inventory management 
12. Online parent inquiry management 
13. Parent appointment scheduling 
14. Handling childcare enrollment processes
15. Generation of attendance and daily reports
16. Staff schedule coordination 
17. Ensuring compliance with health and safety regulations
18. Collaboration with external services providers 

Soft Skills 

Soft skills aren’t just communication skills. They are a broader range of personal attributes you exhibit in various social situations.  These skills are very important. Yet many don’t actively think about them as they believe it to simply be a matter of personality. This could not be any further from the truth! 

Helping to raise and care for children requires a certain character type and characteristics such as empathy, compassion, and patience, paired with a level of kindness that allows you to build trustful relationships with the child and their parents. 

Then there’s of course negotiation skills, which are definitely needed for when the child you work with has decided to begin questioning everything around them. 

To make your childcare worker resume even more compelling, highlight the following soft skills: 

1. Empathy 
2. Emotional self-control 
3. Adaptability 
4. Positive outlook 
5. Creativity 
6. Conflict resolution 
7. Integrity 
8. Persuasion skills 
9. Time management 
10. Trustworthiness
11. Problem Sensitivity 
12. Resilience 
13. Cultural awareness 
14. Leadership 
15. Cooperation 
16. Emotional support 
17. Playful engagement 
18. Cooperation
19. Imagination
20. Playful engagement 

So How Do You Say You’re Good With Kids On A Resume?

It’s best to emphasize that you are good with kids in your resume summary — the topmost header area where you highlight your main qualifications in 2-3 short sentences. You can add one of the following “pitches” as an example:

“Piano and singing teacher with a patient, child-first approach to tutoring. My goal is to help each student discover the passion for music no matter their natural abilities.” 

“CPA-certified childcare worker, delicious cook, and expert in dinosaurs focused on a safe and nurturing environment for children.” 

You can then further elaborate on your ability to get along well with kids by describing your past work experiences and duties. You can read more about how to list babysitting jobs on your resume.

Training and Certifications 

Although most childcare positions don’t require specialized education beyond GED, having extra educational credentials always helps. Some private childcare institutions, as well as families, may prefer to higher workers with specific nanny certifications (and pay a higher rate of course, for their services!). 

So if you have completed specific training programs on the job or paid for nanny certifications out of pocket, be sure to bring up these on your resume. 

Examples of career-advancing training and certification programs for childcare professionals include: 

1. First aid and CPR
2. Newborn Care Specialist (NCS) certification 
3. Professional Nanny and Childcare Provider (PNCP) certification
4. Kid’s Nutrition Specialist certification by American Fitness Professionals and Associates (AFPA).
5. Early childhood education certification
6. Nanny basic skills assessment by The International Nanny Association (INA)
7. Special needs care certification
8. Positive discipline training
9. Maternity nurse training 
10. Association Montessori Internationale (AMI) certified teacher
11. Certified Nanny Educator (CNE) 
12. Certified Infant Care Specialist (CICS) 
13. Certified Family Childcare Provider (CFCCP)
14. National Association of Nannies Certification Program (NANCP)
15. American Red Cross Babysitter’s Training Program 
16. Stanford Child Development: Behavior and Mental Health Online Course

Example: Persuasive Resume for a Daycare Worker 

Conclusion 

Now that you have a big list of childcare resume skills examples, there are no more excuses for not writing your resume! Check which of the above skills best describe your actual experience and qualifications. Then start organizing your resume section-by-section, starting with the resume header area and progressing down to work experience, education, and certifications. If you need some extra help with formatting, try our free resume builder!