MANATEE COUNTY, Fla. — Several Florida counties are coming together for a 15-day festival called Suncoast Remake Learning Days after the country saw a decline in 2023.

Students and families will get resources and hands-on learning opportunities at various locations across Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte and DeSoto counties, starting April 20 through May 4.

One organization in Manatee County is working with parents to get their kids the materials they need to boost their reading levels. 

Amanda Quirino is teaching her kids something new through a game of hopscotch.

Playing hopscotch isn’t the typical way to improve literacy, but it works for her family. Quirino has her kids focus on enunciation.

“This is a game we don’t see anymore to show them what we grew up with. It’s simple like hopscotch or writing their name,” she said.

Quirino has a table filled with learning materials, like arts and crafts, she received from Soar in 4, a nonprofit that provides free literacy tools and resources to parents who need financial aid.

“I became a mom at the age of 20. So I was a very young mom, and I just wanted to be able to find the right resources,” she said.

For the past 10 years, Quirino has received about a dozen items each week. Her children are bilingual, and she says those supplies have helped them overcome the hurdles of learning two languages.

“My third grader, the testing is non-stop sometimes. So she needs to be that fluent reader and she needs to be able to comprehend the questions. My kindergartener, they have sight words. So anytime I can expose them to that, it will help them,” she said.

According to Soar in 4, 50% of Manatee County students are reading below their grade level. Sheila Halpin, one of the organization coordinators, said the materials they provide help kids improve their reading and writing skills.

“Soar in 4 has been in existence for 10 years. We have grown and grown and grown. We are seeing that the kids who attend preschool are getting better in 3rd-grade assessment,” Halpin said.

They help roughly 800 families a day with free materials. Halpin says more than 90% of families who have attended a Soar in 4 event are using the at-home material and are reading more to their kids.

“Families just don’t have the funds to purchase all of these items. We teach our families that when we are jumping rope, we talk about counting again. How many? 1, 2, 3, once again. Counting leads into literacy,” she said.

Quirino’s chidlren read every day, and she says their skills have improved with the help of the hands-on tools Soar in 4 provides.

“I’ve seen them pronouncing the sounds, putting it together, and connecting them. Maybe they would just know one sound, and now if they have the two sounds that go together or we count out syllables, and it’s helped them in their school life,” Quirino said.

For Quirino, having these free resources is like connecting the pieces of a puzzle.

“We barely just became homeowners last August. We rented for 10 years with our family, so we are finally able to do bigger and better things with our family. But it was hard, so it was through our programs that we were able to connect and get resources that we needed. It was a journey,” she said.

Community resources that help families so their kids can have bigger and brighter futures.