HIPPY – Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters

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

 HIPPY is about helping parents (in practice normally mothers) teach their four-, five- and six-year-olds at home collaterally to kindergarten. It's about children who enter school ready to succeed with parents ready to support them throughout their educational careers.

 HIPPY is an international successful education program very convenient for immigrant families:

 A tutor with the same cultural background trains and supports participating mothers in weekly home-visits to make them feel comfortable in their own abilities to teach their children. The tutor provides the mother with the HIPPY storybooks and activity-packs and trains her how to work with it. These materials are written in German language, the bilingual tutor can offer help by translating into native language. A home-visit lasts about an hour. The mothers’ mission is to spend twenty minutes a day with her child with a storybook or a learning game. Doing this, mother and child learn much more than just German language: they learn that education brings fun and pleasure.

 Every other week HIPPY-mothers attend group-meetings with other parents and the HIPPY-staff to interact with each other about their experience with HIPPY and with their children in general. Each of these meetings is focused on a special subject from fields like education, nutrition or health. HIPPY staff or invited experts provide the mothers with information and invite them to a discussion.

All family members benefit from HIPPY:

·   The HIPPY-child because of the intensive care they get from their mother and because they learn in a playful way.

·   The sisters and brothers because they learn that education can bring fun and pleasure.

·   The father because he gets proud of his family and especially of his wife.

·   The mother because she can be pleased with the success, gets more courageous in interaction with other people and institutions like kindergarten or school and wins recognition in and outside the family.

HIPPY is empowerment based on voluntariness accompanying families from the age of 4 of their children to school enrolment. There is also a special program for first-grader. 

Costs for material and learning-documents 10,- € 7 times a year

Contact:

Mag.a Dolma Breunig Tel.: 0463/ 5877-2424 dolma.breunig@kath-kirche-kaernten.at

Mag.a Anja Bernsteiner, Tel.: 0676/87722434 anja.bernsteiner@kath-kirche-kaernten.at

Alma Velic, Tel.: 0676/87722492, alma.velic@kaht-kirche-kaernten.at