Wildwood Programs promote practices and policies that enable people with disabilities to lead productive and independent lives.

Wildwood Programs

Working collaboratively with families to empower children and adults to lead independent, productive and fulfilling lives.

Gallery shop
secure online ordering of the original Froebel gifts and blocks

Gallery Artists
representative images of their work

Art Consulting Services
selecting, placing and restoring art

History of the Gallery
and its director

Froebelia
low cost items with artistic qualities

Friedrich Froebel:
His Life, Times and Significance

Wildwood School

A private, not-for-profit day program for students between the ages of 3 to 21 with neurological impairments, complex learning disabilities, autism and other neurologically-based developmental disorders. Established in 1967, Wildwood enrolls more than 187 students from 54 school districts in 13 counties.

Parents and staff work together as a team to design a highly individualized and comprehensive program that meets the student's unique needs, capitalizes on the student's strengths, integrates the student into the community and plans for the future.

Music and The Learning Environment

Music, through its elements of melody, rhythm and form, offers a predictable, safe, and temporal structure for learning. It has a beginning and an end. It has a pulse. It has repetition that allows time and structure for processing to occur. Music can create an environment that enhances a child's ability to learn by structuring activities with inherent opportunities for: modeling, imitation, feedback, interaction, repetition and reciprocity.

Wildwood Institute

The Wildwood Institute was created in 1996 by Wildwood Programs with extensive assistance from the International Center for Leadership in Education. The Institute is charged with the mission of "promoting practices and policies that enable people with disabilities to lead productive and independent lives." Since its founding, the Institute's primary focus has been the creation and use of its ground-breaking cost-benefit analysis model, the Framework for the Evaluation of Cost and Benefit in Special Education.