Bright Beginnings

About us · Fort Wayne, Indiana

It started in a kindergarten classroom.

Sixteen years of teaching kindergarten, and too many children arriving without ever having been read to.

Why we opened

Why the day is built around a book.

“I taught kindergarten for sixteen years and kept meeting five-year-olds who’d never been read to. Bright Beginnings opened in 2014 so the reading could start sooner.”

That is still the whole idea. Reading aloud twice a day isn’t an activity we schedule when there is time left over — it is the thing the rest of the day is built around, for the toddlers as much as for the 3-to-5s.

A kindergarten teacher can tell within a week which children have been read to. We would rather every child arrived at kindergarten on the right side of that line.

A teacher holding a picture book open for three small children who lean in to look.

Teachers who stay

The same face in September and in June.

Of everything we’re known for, this is the one parents notice last and value most. Our teachers stay for years, so the person who greets your two-year-old on the first nervous morning is the same person who knows exactly which book he wants by spring — and, often enough, the same person who greets his little sister a few years later.

“Same lead teacher for both my kids, four years apart. That says everything.”

— The Ferraros
A grinning child at the top of a bright orange playground slide, hands on the rails, about to push off.

Come and look

We’d rather you saw the room than read about it.

The tour is free, the trial morning is free, and neither one is a sales pitch — the trial is a normal morning with your child in it. Bring your questions; that is what the tour is for.

We’re open Monday to Friday, 7am to 6pm.

Book a free tourSee tuition
An art corner with folding wooden easels against a white wall, baskets of brushes and blocks on a shelf, and a tall window onto trees.

Since 2014

Books twice a day. Outside in every weather.

Those two things, and teachers who stay, haven’t changed since the day we opened. Come and see them for yourself.

Book a free tour