It's the second week of November and a parent asks, half out the door, "wait — are you open the Friday after Thanksgiving?" You haven't decided. You say "I'll let you know," and now you have nine days to make a call that affects four working families, one of whom has already booked flights.
That whole scene is avoidable, and the fix takes about an hour once a year. Sit down, pick your closure dates for the next twelve months, put them on one page, and hand that page to every family. Everything below is how to build that page.
To be clear about scope: this article is about which days you close and how to publish them. Whether those days are paid is a separate decision — most providers do charge normal tuition through published holiday closures, and the reasoning behind that lives in the provider time-off guide and, for days the child misses while you're open, the absence payment guide.
Start from the federal list
The eleven federal holidays are the natural backbone, because they're the days your families' own employers are most likely to close, which means those parents are home anyway.
| Holiday | Date | How commonly home daycares close |
|---|---|---|
| New Year's Day | January 1 | Nearly always |
| Martin Luther King Jr. Day | 3rd Monday in January | Varies — many stay open |
| Washington's Birthday / Presidents' Day | 3rd Monday in February | Varies — many stay open |
| Memorial Day | Last Monday in May | Nearly always |
| Juneteenth | June 19 | Growing; varies |
| Independence Day | July 4 | Nearly always |
| Labor Day | 1st Monday in September | Nearly always |
| Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples' Day | 2nd Monday in October | Varies — many stay open |
| Veterans Day | November 11 | Varies |
| Thanksgiving Day | 4th Thursday in November | Nearly always |
| Christmas Day | December 25 | Nearly always |
The "how commonly" column is a general read of what providers describe, not a survey result — your local market matters more than any national pattern. In a neighborhood full of federal or school-district employees, the middle-tier holidays are near-mandatory. In a neighborhood of retail and healthcare workers, closing on Presidents' Day may leave four families stranded for a day their employers don't recognize at all.
Most home daycares end up closing somewhere in the range of six to twelve holidays a year, not all eleven federal ones and rarely fewer than six.
The judgement calls
The federal list doesn't include the days that actually cause arguments. These are the ones to decide deliberately.
The day after Thanksgiving. Not a federal holiday, but widely treated as one — a large share of private employers close, and families frequently travel Wednesday through Sunday. If you stay open you may find you're caring for one child on a Friday. Deciding to close is common; deciding to stay open is fine too. Deciding in November is the mistake.
Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve. Neither is a federal holiday. Common patterns are closing both fully, closing at midday, or staying open. If you go with early closing, publish the exact time — "closing at 1:00 p.m." — rather than "closing early," which every family will interpret differently.
The week between Christmas and New Year's. Some providers close the whole stretch. It's the single largest closure block in a typical calendar and the one families most need advance warning about, since school-age siblings are home too and grandparents get booked early.
Good Friday and other religious observances. Not federal holidays, though some states observe Good Friday. Whether you close depends on your own practice and your families'. If you observe a holiday most of your families don't, treat it exactly like any other closure: name it, date it, publish it a year out. You don't owe anyone an explanation for it.
Floating or personal days. A couple of unnamed days you reserve for training, a medical appointment, or a family event. The trick is to publish the number up front — "up to two additional closure days per year, announced at least three weeks ahead" — even before you know the dates. Families can plan around a known quantity of unknown days far better than around a surprise.
Election Day, school in-service days, and local closures. Worth checking your district calendar once a year. You may not close for these, but they change who's home and can affect attendance either way.
When a holiday lands on a weekend
Five of the eleven federal holidays fall on a fixed calendar date rather than a set weekday — New Year's Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Veterans Day, and Christmas Day. Those drift across the week and land on a Saturday or Sunday some years. The federal convention is simple and worth borrowing so nobody has to guess: when the holiday falls on a Sunday, it's observed the following Monday; when it falls on a Saturday, it's observed the preceding Friday.
Two practical notes. First, write the rule into your handbook once rather than re-deciding each year — "fixed-date holidays falling on a weekend are observed on the adjacent Friday or Monday, per the federal schedule" covers it permanently. Second, that rule is why some years are heavier than others: a year where several fixed-date holidays land on weekends produces more weekday closures than a year where they land midweek. Build the actual calendar each year rather than reusing last year's list, or you'll be off by two or three days.
Publishing it so nobody is surprised
The calendar only works if it's out in the world well before the dates on it.
- Build the full twelve months in one sitting, ideally in the fall for the following calendar year
- Apply your weekend-observance rule and write out the real dates, not just holiday names
- Add your vacation weeks and any floating days to the same page, so it's one list, not three (if your program closes for the whole summer on purpose rather than staying open, our school-year-only enrollment guide covers building that into your calendar and your enrollment terms from the start)
- Note any early-closing days with the exact time
- Include the rule for emergency closures — weather, illness, an outage — and how you'll notify families
- Send it to every enrolled family, in writing, in whatever channel you already use for business
- Hand it to every new family at enrollment alongside the paperwork
- Post a copy somewhere physical near the door
- Re-send it in early November, when the winter holidays start driving people's plans
Two more things worth doing. Attach the calendar to your signed enrollment agreement so it's part of what a family agrees to, not a separate note they may have missed. And put the general policy — how many closure days you take, the notice you give, the weekend rule — into your parent handbook, where it stays true year to year even as the specific dates change.
Because the calendar reduces your open weeks, it also belongs in the conversation when you set or raise your rate — the rate-setting guide is where that math happens.
A note on scope, since this touches licensing: closure requirements and any notice rules for licensed providers vary by state, and this is general business guidance rather than legal advice. If you receive subsidy payments for any child, that program may have its own rules about closure days and how they're reported, so confirm with your licensing agency or program contact.
Where DaycareFlow fits
DaycareFlow doesn't publish a holiday calendar for you — that's a real gap, and worth naming honestly. What it does is keep the rest of the year's schedule straight.
The calendar view holds your planned attendance week by week, so a week you've deliberately left empty for a closure reads as intentional rather than forgotten, and you can see at a glance which families were expecting to be there. Per-child profiles and billing records keep each family's rate and contact details in one place, so when you do need to send the year's calendar out, you're not assembling a contact list from memory. Share codes give parents read-only access to their own child's record without another back-and-forth.
Automated announcements to families — the email or text that pushes your calendar out — are coming, not shipped. For now, publishing it is still something you send yourself.
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Frequently asked questions
What holidays are home daycares usually closed for?
Most home daycares build their calendar around the eleven federal holidays and close for somewhere between six and twelve days a year. New Year's Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are the near-universal ones. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents' Day, Juneteenth, Columbus Day, and Veterans Day vary much more by provider and local market.
Are daycares closed the day after Thanksgiving?
Many are, though it isn't a federal holiday. A large share of private employers close that Friday and families often travel for the long weekend, so providers who stay open sometimes find they have one child all day. It's genuinely your call — the important part is publishing the decision well before November rather than fielding the question at pickup.
What happens when a holiday falls on a Saturday or Sunday?
The federal convention is that a holiday landing on Sunday is observed the following Monday and one landing on Saturday is observed the preceding Friday. Borrowing that rule and writing it into your handbook means you never have to re-decide it. Note that it makes some years heavier than others, so build a fresh calendar annually instead of reusing last year's dates.
How far in advance should I give families my closure calendar?
Publish the full twelve months before the year starts — the fall is a natural time to do it. Families frequently have to use their own paid time off or arrange a grandparent to cover a closure, and that can't be organized on short notice. Re-sending the calendar in early November, when winter plans get made, prevents most of the friction.
How many total days a year should a home daycare close?
There's no rule, and it's a business decision rather than a licensing one in most places. Common practice lands around six to twelve holidays, plus whatever vacation weeks and floating days you take. Decide the total deliberately, publish it all on one page, and factor the reduced number of open weeks into your rate rather than discovering the shortfall in July.
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