LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – The Bring Learning Home Initiative is expanding to Lake County, providing families around the county with free home access to ABCmouse Early Learning Academy via the library.

ABCmouse is the leading educational Web site and app for children ages 2 to 8, with more than 10,000 learning activities, including books, games, songs, puzzles and animations.

As of Sept. 14, families can “check out” ABCmouse accounts for three weeks at a time from the Lake County Library.

For people who don’t have mobile devices for their children to use at home, each Lake County Library location has five mobile-broadband tablets pre-loaded with the ABCmouse app that library patrons can check out for three weeks at a time.

When patrons check out an ABCmouse account from the library, they get full access to the research-validated ABCmouse curriculum, including more than 10,000 learning activities (hundreds available in Spanish), several stand-alone mobile apps that can be used without internet connectivity, and digital assessments that help track your child’s progress in key early literacy and math skills over time.

The program is designed to increase school readiness and reading proficiency and can be used by up to three children per family.

Bring Learning Home is a nationwide initiative that helps children prepare for and succeed in school by bringing effective early learning resources to families at no cost.

According to The Nation’s Report Card, two out of every three children in the U.S. are not proficient in reading by the time they reach fourth grade.

Bring Learning Home seeks to change that by partnering with libraries that play a critical role in serving at-risk children and by providing effective educational resources that build on classroom instruction at home.

Children using ABCmouse through this program are averaging significant growth in literacy and math skills after just one month. Research shows that regular weekly usage of ABCmouse helps prevent the “summer slide” in reading and can drive significant gains in early literacy and math skills.

Jan Cook is a library technician with the Lake County Library.