News Photo by Julie Goldberg Angie Bruning, coordinator for the Great Start Collaborative for the Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Educational Service District, on Tuesday gets a bag ready that people will receive for attending the Building Blocks for Kids Birth to 5 event at Alpena Community College on Saturday.

ALPENA — On Saturday, child care providers, preschool teachers, parents, and others will gather at Alpena Community College to learn about helping young children with literacy, behavior, and other issues.

A conference called Building Blocks for Kids Birth to 5 happens from 8 a.m. to 3:15 p.m. in the Granum Theatre and Newport Center Building at the college.

Attendance costs $15 and is open to parents, caregivers, childcare providers, and early childhood professionals.

The event’s keynote speaker is Kristen Rocha Aldrich, associate program director for the Cities Strategy for Too Small to Fail at the Clinton Foundation.

Aldrich leads the Talking is Teaching: Talk, Read, Sing community campaign, which focuses on connecting with families in everyday spaces, like coin laundries and stores.

Angie Bruning, coordinator for the Great Start Collaborative for the Alpena-Montmorency-Alcona Educational Service District, said the campaign involves putting posters up around communities to remind people to help kids with their brain development, early learning, and reading.

Saturday’s event will offer breakout sessions focusing on literacy, behavior, trauma-informed care, and other issues. Bruning said most of the sessions focus on preschool literacy essentials.

The event will also have a session about the Child Care Development Block Grant, which is the primary source of federal child care subsidies for low-income working families and funds to improve child care quality.

That session will also help people understand who is eligible to receive state assistance for child care. People will have the opportunity to ask questions.

Registration for the event closed on Jan. 15, but Bruning said organizers will take some registration at the door on Saturday.

“It’s just going to be a really fun day,” Bruning said. “It’s a nice thing to be able to do this in our rural, northern Michigan area. A lot of conferences are downstate, or even out of state, and working together with planning partners, we really listen to the unique needs in our area.”

For more information about the event, call 877-614-7328.

Julie Goldberg can be reached at 989-358-5688 or jgoldberg@thealpenanews.com. Follow her on Twitter @jkgoldberg12.