A young boy walks across a wooden bridge outdoors with a staff member behind him.

Overview

Individualized programming

Our Early Learning Center, for children ages 3 to 6 years old, strives to increase each child’s sense of self confidence and age-appropriate independence skills. 

Families are a critical part of each students’ team and a social worker is assigned to each family to facilitate good communication between school and home. Taking a cultural competence approach, Perkins staff work closely with family members to prioritize individualized learning objectives and help parents carry over learning into the home and community settings.

Specialized educational services

The Early Learning Center is complemented by a team of educators highly experienced and trained in working with children with all forms of vision diversity including blindness, low vision, ocular vision impairment and cortical/cerebral visual impairment, with or without additional physical and/or developmental disabilities.

Early literacy skills

  • Object story boxes, pre-braille, braille and large print awareness and letter knowledge, phonological awareness
  • Time/calendar concepts, spatial concepts, one-to-one correspondence and early math skills
  • Support the efficient use of residual vision and CVI strategies
  • Enhancing compensatory skills such as touch and hearing

Communication skills

  • Language development
  • Total communication and integrated AAC assessment and implementation
  • Social/Emotional development
  • Active learning
  • Morning meeting, music and theme based learning

Specialized & related services

  • Speech-Language therapy
  • Occupational therapy
  • Physical therapy
  • Orientation and mobility
  • Teacher of students with visual impairment
  • Developmental psychology and behavioral support services
  • Music therapy

Setting a foundation for life-long learning.

Alexandra LaVoie Assistant Education Director

“Perkins’ approach to learning looks different for everyone. The commonality is that we take each moment with every student as a learning opportunity.”

Addressing the whole student

We use a team-based approach to develop individual educational plans for children that incorporate compensatory skill development, multi-sensory instruction and the efficient use of residual vision.

Our work goes beyond the classroom to our campus pool, outdoor play areas and local field trips, where students use hands-on learning and new sensory experiences to engage in the world around them.

We prepare students for academic and functional success, with a special focus on Expanded Core Curriculum skills including:

  • Orientation and mobility
  • Dressing, toileting and feeding
  • Social interaction
  • Assistive technology
  • Sensory skills

Specialized staff

Our dedicated staff members are knowledgeable about visual impairments and additional disabilities. They include:

  • Special education teachers
  • Certified teachers of children with visual impairments
  • Orientation and mobility specialists
  • Music therapists
  • Clinical/Related services
  • Paraprofessional/teaching assistant staff

Early learning stories & resources

Contact Perkins

Have questions?

We’re here to help you. We’d love to tell you more about our preschool programs.

A young girl and her mother embracing with joy in front of a fountain.

Every child deserves the right start in school.

Think we’d make a great fit for your preschool child? Learn more about our admissions process today!