Nancy Stewart has been a part of the Mercer Island community for 32 years, and through different programs, from “Animal Crackers” to free guitar lessons, has brought people together through music.

She said that Mercer Island is the perfect place to launch her new project: Sing With Our Kids, a website that provides free resources for early learning through community singing.

“We learn by singing together, and to sing together we need to know the same songs,” she said.

One of her goals is to preserve the traditional music that shapes cultural knowledge and language skills.

“There are fewer and fewer songs that children know, and to me, that was a tipping point,” she said. “To see these songs disappear is terrible.”

She is also helping parents rediscover the importance of music in connecting with their children and building the skills that will help them learn how to read.

The Island is her “laboratory” to test ideas, as it is “geographically small, but has a library, book store, 20-some preschools and daycares, three elementary schools, numerous churches and synagogues, two retail business districts, and lots and lots of parks,” according to her website, singwithourkids.com.

“Singing is something you can do with newborn babies and people who are 100 years old,” she said. “It’s as necessary as air and water.”

Her website provides free downloads of MP3 files, lyrics and chord sheets, as well as information for teachers, parents, librarians and home-schooling families.

Some of the events she’s planned recently include fireside sing-alongs, scavenger hunts and community singing in Island parks. Soon, she’ll do a “Sing Along with Barkley” at the pet shop and holiday caroling in Island neighborhoods.

“People tell me they forgot what it feels like to sing in a group … to hold hands and sing ‘Ring Around the Rosy,’” she said. “It’s about connection.”

Singing with a child builds their memory, sense of rhythm, spatial reasoning and vocabulary. Most people never forget the songs they learn as kids, like the alphabet, Stewart said.

“That is the magic of music and literacy. It makes sounds and words into patterns so our brains can remember them,” she writes on her website.

She is documenting her experiences with real families on her site, building it into a “living growing, and continuing resource.”

With the website, she hopes to “use the same technology that has made us sing less to help us sing more.”

This is the third year of the project, Stewart said, and it is getting national and regional attention.

Throughout the project, she has partnered with several Mercer Island institutions, often doing events at the library or Island Books, and working with its owners Nancy and Roger Page.

This week, she’s putting on a “Sing A Song to Roger” event, where Island Book patrons who sing to its owner will get a sticker, and a nickel.

Ultimately, she wants to “give people songs to sing and places to sing them.”