Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Applications Sought

Clark County Youth Development Center is now accepting applications for the HIPPY (Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters), a model program designed to assist parents in helping their children realize their full learning potential.

HIPPY is an early childhood education program that focuses on the parent as the child's first and most influential teachers.

HIPPY currently reaches over 13,000 families in 27 states. It serves parents who have had limited access to formal education and their three- to five-year-old children, by sending a paraprofessional, who is also a parent from the participating community, into the home each week.

During the home visit, the paraprofessional prepares the parent to work with his or her child by role playing that week's activities together.

Eat week the parents and paraprofessionals meet together at the HIPPY site to role play that week's activities together, and to participate in enrichment activities. After role playing the week;s activities, each parent spends 15 to 20 minutes a day working on the curriculum with the child.

Currently 41 families in Clark County are receiving services from the HIPPY program. If you have a child who will be four years of age on or before October, you may enroll your child in the program. Children enrolled in Daycare and Head Start programs are eligible to participate if those agencies are not receiving state ABC funding.

For more information, call Clark County Youth Development Center at 353-6145.