The education and training of early childhood educators (developed by the researchers) and their intervention on children.

Receive the standard care.

A 24-week cluster randomized trial will be developed, with the childcare being the randomization unit. Training sessions will be conducted for all early childhood educators in the intervention group. The control group will receive the Portuguese "standard" education and at the end of the intervention this group will also receive the initial training given to the intervention group, so that they can later also implement the intervention. At the end of the intervention, all early childhood educators and parents/guardians will have access to the intervention outcomes.

The Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development - III edition identifies the child's developmental competencies across five major developmental domains; identifies deficits in very young children; and determines the need for further in-depth assessment. Raw scores from the cognitive and social-emotional scale, which does not contain separate subtests, can be converted to a scaled score (M=10, SD=3), which can then additionally be converted to a composite score equivalent (M=100, SD=15). Raw scores for cognitive and motor subtests translate to scaled scores based on 10-day increments up to age 5 months 16 days, at which point norms are based on 1-month intervals (e.g., 5 months 16 days to 6 months 15 days, 35 months 16 days to 36 months 15 days). The normative sample for the social-emotional domain is divided into nine age categories (by months: 0-3, 4-5, 6-9, 10-14, 15-18, 19-24, 25-30, and 31-40). Higher values represent a better performance.

The child's eating habits will be collected using the one-day food record, completed by parents or early childhood educators.

Physical activity, sleep and sedentary behavior will be assessed using the Actigraph accelerometer, which will be used for 5 consecutive days (3 days a week and 2 days a weekend).

Families' profile will be assessed using the Graffar scale, adapted to Portugal. This is an international social classification, used as an indicator of the various welfare levels of a social group. It includes 5 criteria: occupation, level of education, sources of family income, housing comfort and appearance of the neighbourhood. The sum of the points obtained in the classification provides a final score that corresponds to social class, according to the following classification: Class I (5-9 points), Class II (10-13 points), Class III (14-17 points), Class IV (18-21 points) and Class V (22-25 points). The higher the score, the better the sociodemographic profile.