While Cisco qualifies for public preschool, this summer I decided I know him best and can provide the best educational, therapeutic and loving environment for him. We went on a tour of the preschool before deciding. It was overcrowded and overstimulation for me much less a toddler with visual impairment. It also was not set up at all for a child to be in a walker or belly crawling. I also wanted to focus my energies on a medicaid waiver to pay for his many expenses and get an attendant to help a couple times a week while I homeschool his brother (we got the Virginia EDCD Medicaid waiver based on his disability).
We have been doing “preschool” focused on motor skills and visual acuity. We have been doing fingerplays from Baby’s First Book by Clare Beaton and Tessa Strickland and activities from Everyday Activities to Promote Visual Efficiency: A Handbook for Working with Young Children with Visual Impairments… by Ellen Trief and Rona Shaw. He has also continued weekly speech and sign language, we did OT weekly through October and are back to bimonthly PT with the county early intervention program that is now free thanks to medicaid.