Join Let’s Move! Child Care today. And give your kids a healthier future.

 

What's Working for Others

Not sure that you’re ready or able to make changes now — or that our Let’s Move! Child Care ideas will even work for your center or home?

Well, child care providers just like you have stepped up to the plate to start adapting the nutrition and physical activities of the kids in their care — for the better.

Share Your Story

Tell us your tale of progress and success. Use one of the forms below to share how you've impacted your program or your community by working toward the five goals of Let's Move! Child Care.

Case in point: The Latin American Community Center (LACC).

The LACC in Wilmington, DE, nurtures nearly 400 children in child care, after school, and summer camp programs. Since 2008, the Center has worked with Nemours Health & Prevention Services (NHPS) — one of our partners in Let’s Move! Child Care — to reduce portion sizes and transform its nutrition.

A Testimonial from Maria Matos, Executive Director of LACC
Maria Matos helps prevent early childhood obesity at her center.

“Our menus now offer varied, nutritious, ethnic foods that the children enjoy. Parents have expressed that while at home, their children talk about healthy habits and choose to eat fruits and vegetables as opposed to less nutritious snacks,” says the Center’s executive director, Maria Matos.

“We removed the soda machines and stopped serving sugared fruit juice. The kids drink water and 1 percent or skim milk. We don’t use any products that are fried or have added sugar. And when we serve bread or rice, it’s whole grain. We serve a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. We no longer give heaping portions, and the children eat well; they are full.”

Huge Strides in the First State

To ensure that kids in licensed child care get plenty of healthy food and physical activity for their growing bodies, providers all over Delaware have made comprehensive changes to standards for physical activity and nutrition in the child care setting — all made possible through collaboration with Nemours Health & Prevention Services, Delaware’s Office of Child Care Licensing (OCCL), Delaware’s Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), sponsors of child care centers and family child care homes, and local food vendors.

The First State’s child care regulations (nationally recognized for their requirements to promote kids' healthy development) teach healthy lifestyles to our youngest children and serve as a model for other states. What’s going on in Delaware is a shining example of the kind of positive changes that need to be made in child care centers nationwide.

What other Delaware care providers say about the results they're seeing:

“It is important that centers ensure that children eat healthy and engage in physical activities as this is the cornerstone of healthy development. Having specific guidelines instituted by the Office of Child Care Licensing ensures that centers have a framework to utilize in creating their center and family policies. These guidelines allow us to engage families as well as educate them to be an active participant in their child’s nutrition and physical development. The implementation of these guidelines has not been difficult. Yes, it does take some creativity and thought process to change our menus or to pack a nutritious lunch, but the end result is that children are eating healthy.”

— Cheryl Clendaniel, Early Childhood Administrator, The Learning Center

"Breakfast, lunch, and snack have been part of our whole child approach for more than 120 years. What’s new is today’s wealth of knowledge about the impact that good eating habits developed early in life can have on a person’s lifetime health. Teaching good eating habits and proper exercise are more important than ever before in our school’s long history. Our young children learn to make wise food choices, and our families are learning to put good foods on the table even at a time when dollars are tight. St. Michael’s has the opportunity to change the way families think so that they see healthy eating as a critical ingredient in raising children."

—Helen Riley, Executive Director, St. Michael’s School, Wilmington, DE

Forging Change in Florida

Through Nemours Florida Prevention Initiative, child care providers in the Sunshine State are shaking things up, too, and seeing real results:

“The children were at lunch and were telling me which foods were an ‘anytime’ food and which were a ‘sometime’ food.  It was so incredible to see the children discussing this. The program obviously works and leaves a great impression on our children.”

— Early Learning Coalition of Seminole County, FL (Bee Kids)