This month marks the third anniversary of Let’s Move! Child Care, a nationwide call-to-action that empowers child care and early education providers to make positive health changes in children that could last a lifetime. On this occasion, we salute the over 12,500 child care and early education providers who have committed to working towards the Initiative’s 5 goals and best practices for healthy nutrition, physical activity, breastfeeding support, and screen time. Watch this video to see how it all began.

It’s lunchtime! CentroNia students self-serve a healthy meal of whole grains, fruit, and salad. (Photo courtesy of CentroNia)

First Lady Michelle Obama launched Let’s Move! Child Care in June 2011 at CentroNía’s bilingual child care center in Washington, DC. At that time, CentroNía was already ahead of the curve in supplying outstanding nutrition education to more than 1,000 children and families through its award-winning “I Want to Be Healthy” curriculum and in serving over 500,000 healthy meals every year to children from families in need. Now, three years later, CentroNía continues to model best practices for in-house nutrition programs in early care and education environments. Read more about CentroNia’s success.

CentroNia students and teacher work together in the garden. (Photo courtesy of CentroNia)

Since its launch, Let’s Move! Child Care has provided access to information, training materials, and free resources to child care and early education providers. In addition to the thousands of providers, several large child care and early education networks (New Horizon Academy, Bright Horizons, Learning Care Group, Knowledge Universe, Department of Defense, General Services Administration, and Head Start) have joined Let’s Move! Child Care. To date, 721 providers are fully meeting all of the Let’s Move! Child Care best practices, and the Initiative is now reaching more than 1.3 million young children.