Handwriting Consultation and Tutoring
Individualized Handwriting Consultation and Handwriting Tutoring.
Handwriting Without Tears Programming and Multi Sensory approach.
Individualized Tutoring for Kindergarten Readiness and Elementary School Handwriting (aged 4-12 years) with goal of building skills for success with handwriting and school related tasks.
Discovering My Dyslexia Superpowers
Megan Nicolas has a passion for encouraging children with dyslexia. As an occupational therapist, she helps children become confident learners and jumps at the chance to walk alongside families to help them navigate their dyslexia journeys and find success with handwriting. In 2022, she (and her twins) authored “Discovering My Dyslexia Superpowers,” an encouraging graphic novel that highlights strengths that oftentimes accompany the dyslexic brain and normalizes dyslexia, structured literacy and specialized intervention.
Discovering My Dyslexia Superpowers was written to fill a gap in children’s dyslexia literature. When looking for a children's book about dyslexia at their local library, author Megan Nicolas and her children found one that focused on struggles and difficulties. Her children said “We should write an encouraging book for kids about dyslexia.” So, they did!
The goal is to educate others on the brilliant minds of dyslexics and encourage families to search for the key to unlock those minds.
Research supports the importance of explicitly teaching handwriting. There are many benefits of handwriting including the direct correlation between learning to write and learning to read! Early intervention with 4-5 yr-olds will help build foundation skills needed for successful handwriting in elementary school. Read below to learn more.
Handwriting 101
Handwriting is a complex skill engaging cognitive, perceptual, and motor skills simultaneously. It is best learned through direct instruction (Beringner, 2015; Berninger et al. 2006; Hanstra-Bletz and Blote, 1993; Maeland, 1992). Unfortunately many schools do not directly and explicitly teach handwriting.
The Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools, and Early Intervention (Fancher et al, 2018) published a systemic review on handwriting acquisition and interventions for handwriting for preschoolers through second grade. The results indicated that writing letters in late preschool contributes to letter recognition. Elementary students do better when handwriting is explicitly taught. Legibility improves with adequate practice.
The Journal of Occupational Therapy, School and Early Intervention published a small study comparing traditional handwriting practice versus iPad handwriting instruction. The results indicated that traditional methods of handwriting instruction were superior in terms of letter formation and letter orientation when compared to iPad-mediated practice. In addition, letter recognition increased for those using traditional handwriting methods but stayed stable for the iPad-mediated group (Wells, 2016).
Learning handwriting in preschool is better than learning letters on the computer because research shows that handwriting in print—not keyboarding—leads to adult-like neural processing in the visual system of the preschool child’s developing reading brain (Stevenson & Just, 2014). In one study, researchers found gray matter volume and density correlating with higher handwriting quality, which signals more efficient neural processing and higher skills and ability (Gimenez et al., 2014).
Handwriting is a complex task. Postural control, fine motor, gross motor, midline crossing, bilateral coordination skills, visual perceptual skills, visual motor skills, letter recognition are all foundational skills needed for handwriting.
If your child has difficulty forming letters, holding a pencil or has handwriting that is not legible, they may benefit from handwriting help from an occupational therapist.
Handwriting Without Tears is a research-backed curriculum that follows a developmentally appropriate sequence from Pre-K to 5th grade. It uses explicit, multi sensory instruction combined with guided practice to promote handwriting automaticity.