Severe Weather and Lockdown Drills for Home Daycare (Not Fire Drills)

Everyone thinks of fire when they think of "drill." Grab the kids, walk to the mailbox, count heads. That one's covered elsewhere — if you haven't set up your evacuation routine and log yet, the home daycare fire drill log guide walks through it in detail, and this article won't repeat it.

What trips providers up is the other two categories most licensing rules also expect: shelter-in-place (severe weather — tornado, and in some regions earthquake) and lockdown (an external threat, like an intruder). These aren't optional extras tacked onto the fire plan. They show up as their own line items on the standard inspection checklist, and a drill log that only ever says "fire" is an incomplete record in most states.

They're also genuinely different situations, which is why they need their own routines instead of a copy-pasted version of your fire drill.

Where the requirement comes from

Caring for Our Children (CFOC) — the national health and safety standards that many state licensing rules draw on — groups emergency preparedness into three drill types: evacuation (getting everyone out), shelter-in-place (getting everyone to a safe interior spot and staying there), and lockdown (securing the space against a threat inside or right outside the building). The standards call for practicing all three, reviewing what happened afterward, and adjusting the plan based on what you learn — not just running through the motions once and filing it away.

How often you're required to drill each type, and whether your state even uses these exact three categories, is written into your own regulations, not a national standard. Confirm the specifics for where you're licensed at the home daycare licensing hub rather than assuming this article's general description is your number.

Shelter-in-place: picking the spot before you need it

Shelter-in-place is for a threat outside the building that you can't outrun — severe weather is the common case nationwide, and earthquake procedure (drop, cover, hold on) applies if you're in a region where that's relevant. Either way, the move is the same: get everyone into the safest interior space and stay there until it's over.

What makes a good shelter spot in a home:

An interior room or hallway with no windows, or as few and as small as possible
The lowest level of the house — a basement is ideal if you have one and can get everyone down safely
Away from anything that could fall — bookshelves, mirrors, hanging light fixtures
Big enough that everyone can sit or huddle without being cramped, since you may be there longer than a fire evacuation

A half bath, an interior hallway, a closet under the stairs, or a basement laundry room are all common choices for a home this size. Walk your actual house and pick the spot now, rather than figuring it out mid-emergency — and note it in your written emergency plan so it isn't just something you know in your head.

What to keep there: a phone, a flashlight, and if you might be stuck for a while, a small kit — water, a comfort item, your emergency contact binder. You don't need a bunker. You need a spot you can get four to eight kids into in under a minute, repeatedly, without a fight.

Practicing shelter-in-place without scaring anyone

This is the part that's different from an adult workplace running the same drill. You have toddlers and infants, and the goal is a routine they follow calmly, not an event that teaches them to be afraid of storms.

A few things that hold up in practice:

Give it a name that isn't scary. "Let's go to our cozy spot" or "storm spot" does the job. Avoid "danger," "emergency," or narrating what a tornado can do to a house.
Keep it short. A couple of minutes is enough for most toddlers to practice the sequence — walk, sit, wait. Dragging a drill out past their patience just teaches them the drill is unpleasant, which works against you.
Make the sequence concrete and repeatable. Something like "listen for the signal → walk to the spot → sit down → wait for all clear," practiced the same way every time, sinks in for two- and three-year-olds faster than verbal explanation ever will.
Bring something soothing. A song, a favorite stuffed animal kept in the shelter spot, or just your calm voice and a hand on a shoulder. Kids take their emotional cue from you — if you're brisk and matter-of-fact, they will be too.
Practice on a good day, not just when weather is actually threatening. The first time a child experiences the routine shouldn't be during a real tornado warning with sirens going off.

Lockdown: not a school drill, and not fire-drill logic

Lockdown is the one providers most often get wrong by default — because most of what people know about "lockdown drills" comes from schools, and a home daycare lockdown looks almost nothing like a school one.

A school lockdown assumes a large building, multiple classrooms, an intercom system, and dozens of staff coordinating. A home daycare is one adult and a handful of children inside a house you already control the exits and sightlines of. The federal Office of Head Start's early childhood safety guidance publishes lockdown planning materials written specifically for a family child care home with a single adult present, distinct from the center-based guidance most lockdown material assumes.

What a home lockdown actually involves, in broad strokes:

Get everyone inside and lock the doors and any accessible windows. If you're outside when the alert happens, that's your cue to get in immediately rather than heading toward a shed or car.
Move away from doors and windows, into a room that can't be seen from outside — often the same interior spot you use for shelter-in-place.
Go quiet. Lights off if it doesn't panic the kids more than it helps, phones on silent, no answering the door for anyone.
Use a calm, pre-agreed phrase to signal the drill or the real thing to older kids without alarming them — something like "quiet game time" works for toddlers and preschoolers far better than any word associated with danger.
Stay until you get an all-clear — from law enforcement in a real event, or from yourself in a drill.

Unlike a fire drill, a lockdown drill is not about speed or evacuation — it's about stillness and quiet, which is a genuinely different skill to practice with three-year-olds. Treat it as its own routine rather than "the fire drill but we stay inside."

Documenting it the same way you document fire drills

Once you've run the drill, log it exactly the way you'd log a fire drill: date, time, drill type, who was present, how it went, and any corrective note. If you're already keeping a fire drill log, add these as additional rows with the type marked "shelter-in-place" or "lockdown" rather than starting a separate document — a single, complete log is easier for an inspector to review and easier for you to keep current than three scattered ones.

Date and time drilled
Drill type (shelter-in-place, lockdown, or specify — tornado, earthquake, intruder)
Number of children and adults present
Time to reach the shelter spot / secure the space
What went well, what didn't
Any change you made afterward
Your initials

Keep this log with the rest of your ready-to-show paperwork — the inspection-ready daycare kit approach of one folder holding everything a licensor might ask for means a drill log with three drill types in it is just as fast to produce as one with a single type.

It's also worth a line in your parent handbook letting families know these drills happen, the same way you'd disclose fire drills — it heads off the "why did my kid mention hiding in the closet" conversation and shows your plan is communicated, not just written down. If you're building out how and when you communicate with parents generally, setting clear communication boundaries is a good companion piece — most of the same instincts about calm, proactive framing apply here too.

One more category worth a mention even though it's not a drill: a child's safe sleep setup matters most during nap, which is also often the hardest time to run any drill smoothly. If you haven't reviewed your safe sleep policy recently, it's worth doing alongside your emergency planning rather than treating the two as unrelated.

Where DaycareFlow fits

DaycareFlow doesn't keep your emergency drill log — that's paper or a spreadsheet for now, and there's no upside in pretending otherwise. What it does hold is the piece every drill log needs filled in accurately: a live children roster showing exactly who's in your care, and a calendar-based attendance record you confirm as the day happens. When a drill log or a real emergency asks "who was present," that's the number your attendance record already has, instead of something you're reconstructing from memory under pressure.

Free during early access. Start free →

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between shelter-in-place and lockdown in a daycare?

Shelter-in-place is for a threat outside that you can't escape, most often severe weather — everyone moves to a safe interior spot and stays put. Lockdown is for a threat like an intruder — doors get locked, everyone moves away from windows and out of sight, and the space goes quiet. Both use a similar interior spot, but the posture is different: shelter-in-place is about staying safe from the elements, lockdown is about not being seen or heard.

Do home daycares need to do lockdown drills, not just fire drills?

Most states expect emergency planning to cover more than fire, and Caring for Our Children — the national standards many licensing rules draw from — groups drills into evacuation, shelter-in-place, and lockdown. Whether your state requires lockdown specifically, and how often, is written into your own regulations, so confirm it through your licensing agency rather than assuming a national standard sets your number.

How do you practice a shelter-in-place drill with toddlers without scaring them?

Give the drill a calm, non-alarming name like "cozy spot" or "storm spot," keep it short (a couple of minutes is enough), use the same simple sequence every time, and bring something soothing like a song or a comfort item. Avoid words like "danger" or "emergency" — toddlers take their emotional cue from your tone more than your words.

Where should the shelter spot be in a home daycare?

An interior room or hallway with no or few windows, on the lowest level of the house if possible, away from anything that could fall. A basement, an interior hallway, or a windowless bathroom are common choices in a house this size. Pick it in advance and write it into your emergency plan rather than deciding in the moment.

Do I need a separate log for severe weather and lockdown drills?

No — most providers add them as additional entries in the same drill log they use for fire drills, just noting the type. A single complete log covering every drill type is easier to keep current and easier for an inspector to review than several separate documents.