What is HIPPY?

HIPPY is the Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters program.

New - Miriam Westheimer's, "Parents Making a Difference"

The HIPPY program is about helping parents teach their three-, four- and five-year-olds at home. It's about spending fifteen minutes a day at the kitchen table with a storybook, a puzzle, or a learning game, and it's about children who enter kindergarten ready to succeed with parents ready to support them throughout their educational careers.

HIPPY is a home-based, family focused program that helps parents provide educational enrichment for their preschool child. Believing that parents play a critical role in their children's education, the HIPPY program seeks to support those parents who may not feel sufficiently confident to prepare their children for what they consider to be "school knowledge." HIPPY is designed for parents. It gives parents the tools and support they deserve to help their children learn in their own homes.

The HIPPY program builds on the basic bond between parents and children. Supported by easy-to-use activity packets, home visits, and group meetings, HIPPY parents learn how to prepare their children for success in school and beyond. Throughout their children's fourth and fifth years, parents receive a progressive series of 60 weekly packets of daily activities. Every other week they attend group meetings with other parents and HIPPY staff. Learning and play mingle throughout HIPPY's structured curriculum as parents encourage their children to recognize shapes and colors, tell stories, follow directions, solve logical problems, and acquire other school readiness skills.

Parents in the HIPPY program are trained by paraprofessionals, themselves parents from the community. They are also supported by other participants and the local program coordinator. Many HIPPY parents become further involved in the program by training as paraprofessionals. These dedicated staff members work part-time visiting homes teaching parents, through hands-on experiences, to interact with their children in ways that will help prepare them for their early school experiences. As peers of other HIPPY parents, they have a chance to build trust and communicate with hard-to-reach families; as members of the same local community and parents of small children, they can often empathize with the challenges facing HIPPY families and make the program work within their own communities.

Paraprofessionals gain job experience while the program's flexibility allows them to deal with their ongoing concerns as parents. As they work (at what is for many a first job), they develop both a sense of responsibility and crucial skills such as organizing schedules, writing reports, communicating in person, solving problems, and exercising leadership. Along the way, they demonstrate - to themselves and to their communities - their power to change lives for the better.

See also:

About HIPPY International
Parent-Child Activities