Words are gifts for Life

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About Hopa Mountain StoryMakers

A growing body of research confirms that a strong early-learning home environment predicts children’s success in school. Success in school strongly predicts health and economic self-sufficiency in adulthood.

Fundamental principles of human learning underlie the links between very early home environments and later success in school and in life. For example, we know that children’s early experiences in their homes significantly influence their developing brain structures and functions, and thus, their ability to learn. And in healthy home environments, early-learned skills and competencies, particularly relating to language, build upon and reinforce one another, leading to a spiral of broader and stronger skills and competencies – and greater chances for future success.

To support parents in creating home environments that lead to their children’s success in school and in life, StoryMakers works through local StoryMakers Community Teams and Sponsoring Organizations to offer these tools:

• parent-friendly summaries of relevant current research and guides for getting maximum interactive fun and learning from reading and talking to and with babies, toddlers and preschoolers
• high-quality, age- and culturally-appropriate, children’s books for use in fostering healthy social-emotional and cognitive development in babies, toddlers and preschoolers
• support for local early learning trainings
  
  

* In all StoryMakers materials, “parent” means a child’s primary caregiver.

This project is made possible through generous support from Women’s Opportunity and Resource Development (WORD) of Missoula (through their Parent Information and Resource Center funded by the U.S. Department of Education), the Dennis and Phyllis Washington Foundation, the Steele-Reese Foundation, the O.P. and W.E. Edwards Foundation, the Jerry Metcalf Foundation, the Montana Office of Public Instruction, and Hopa Mountain members.