‘Learning begins at home, but it shouldn’t stop there’

BROWN COUNTY – Achieve Brown County, Brown County Library and Casa ALBA Melanie celebrated the launch of ABC Conmigo | ABC With Me this week, a new community-wide literacy initiative designed to help children and families learn, play and explore together this summer.

“We want to send a simple but important message — learning begins at home, but it shouldn’t stop there,” said Amanda Garcia, executive director of Casa ALBA Melanie. “We want to encourage learning beyond the classrooms and beyond libraries by creating opportunities for children and families to learn together, wherever life takes them.”

ABC Conmigo | ABC With Me is a free bilingual alphabet adventure that transforms parks, trails, libraries, neighborhoods, museums, schools and community spaces into interactive literacy experiences.

“It is a community-based initiative designed to help kids under the age of five develop their letter skills so that they can be kindergarten-ready…” said Sarah Sugden, executive director of Brown County Library. “One of the best things we can do for our kids is to talk about those letters. It’s really important that as children get ready and really learn the alphabet that they know their letters — and by ‘know their letters,’ we’re talking about not just being able to identify, ‘That’s a B,’ but making the sound.”

As families visit participating locations, they will be challenged to find all the letters of the alphabet while practicing sounds, discovering new words and exploring language in both English and Spanish.

The experience is designed to encourage meaningful conversations between children and caregivers while reinforcing early literacy skills through play.

“It’s really about engagement — for children to have those really positive experiences talking about letters with someone they love,” Sugden said. “When I go in my neighborhood, I see kids and families out already, as I’m sure a lot of folks do, too. It’s a way for parents to have something intentional to do with their kids… It’s creating those moments of engagement, getting your kid excited about learning.”

Through colorful alphabet signs placed throughout participating locations, children can practice letter recognition, letter sounds, vocabulary and language skills while exploring the places they already know and love.

“It’s a simple but powerful idea,” Garcia said. “When we intentionally design public spaces to encourage reading, conversation, curiosity and exploration, we create communities where learning becomes a part of everyday life. Imagine discovering letters while walking through a neighborhood park or waiting at a laundromat, visiting the museum… Those everyday places become opportunities for children and families to talk, ask questions, build vocabulary and develop early literacy skills together.”

By incorporating both English and Spanish throughout the experience, ABC Conmigo | ABC With Me celebrates multilingualism as a community strength while encouraging families to learn together across languages and cultures.

“Families are a child’s first teachers, and our community has the opportunity to support that learning every day,” Garcia said. “This initiative is about creating a Brown County where children discover language and a love of reading wherever they live, play and explore. This is how we begin building a culture of literacy that belongs to everyone. Every child deserves to grow up surrounded by opportunities to learn, grow and develop a lifelong love of literacy.”
Participating organizations include Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary, Children’s Museum of Green Bay, Green Bay Area Public School District, Brown County Library locations and other parks, schools, libraries, neighborhoods and community organizations committed to supporting early literacy.

“We incorporate literacy a lot,” said Kim Diedrich, chief naturalist at Bay Beach Wildlife Sanctuary. “In our summer camp programs, we’re reading one or two books every day to our summer campers who are with us. In our 4K program, they also are doing a lot of reading and also letter recognition and writing… [ABC Conmigo | ABC With Me] is an ideal fit. It just blends right in with all of our other programming and things that are happening at the sanctuary… The ABC letters are going to be spread on signs throughout the wildlife sanctuary. It’s getting kids and families actively involved and hopefully helping them to achieve better literacy here in Brown County.”

“This project demonstrates what is possible when organizations come together around a shared goal,” said Sarah Beckman, executive director of Achieve Brown County. “By bringing literacy into everyday spaces, we are helping families see that learning can happen anywhere.”

The initiative comes at an important time for Brown County, as only 54.2% of Brown County third graders are meeting reading benchmarks.

“We believe that every kid has the potential to be a great reader, and we as a community need to rally around those parents, caregivers and kids especially in those early years — zero to five years old — when so much of the brain development happens. You don’t get to school until you’re five years old. I don’t want to say it’s too late, but there are a lot of opportunities for us to get to kids and families earlier to provide support, engagement and resources. There’s no silver bullet, but there’s silver buckshot we can use. And we feel that ABC Conmigo is one of those pieces of buckshot we want to use as a community to get our kids ready to read and write.”

Research continues to show that the foundation for reading success is built during a child’s earliest years through reading, talking, singing, playing and exploring with caring adults.
“Every child in Brown County deserves to start school ready to read, and knowing the alphabet before kindergarten is one of the strongest predictors of future reading success,” Sugden said. “ABC Conmigo | ABC With Me makes literacy a community effort — empowering caring neighbors to spark curiosity, encourage learning, and help children build the foundation for a lifetime of reading, one yard sign at a time.”

ABC Conmigo | ABC With Me was created to make those learning opportunities visible, accessible and fun.

The project is part of the forWORDS literacy initiative, Brown County’s community-wide early literacy initiative.

“We know that no organization can solve complex challenges like literacy alone, but together — together being the key word — with a shared vision and shared learning, we can change community conditions around kids and families to produce different and better outcomes,” Beckman said.

Through collaborative action, forWORDS brings together schools, healthcare providers, businesses, nonprofits, families and community members around a shared goal: ensuring more children are reading on grade level by third grade.