Handwriting Resources

We have been working with Nicholas for a few years now on his handwriting. He has been receiving occupational therapy since age two for motor skills development. Abby is four and starting to learn how to write as  well.

When I was teaching, it was up to us whether or not we wanted to include handwriting instruction as part of our day because it was not a formal part of the curriculum. When I taught first grade, I invited our school’s occupational therapist into our room a few times a week to help me work with my students on their handwriting. I think establishing a strong foundation is important and helps to set kids up for success. 

Disclosure: For your convenience, this post contains Amazon affiliate links to the products mentioned. 

Handwriting is something all children must learn and something we are working on very, very hard in our house. If you are in a similar position, I have some handwriting resources to share that have been very helpful to our family. Aaaaaannnddd…here they are!

1. Handwriting Without Tears– This program has been recommended to me by no less than five different occupational therapists. It uses lines and curves to teach children how to visualize letters before they write. There are also some kinesthetic techniques like “wet, dry, try” associated with this program that are very helpful for children who are still in the beginning stages of learning how to form their letters. You can purchase many of the Handwriting Without Tears workbooks and other materials on Amazon.

2. Mr. Pencil from LeapFrog. Santa brought this little wonder to our house for Christmas a few weeks ago and the kids actually fight over who gets to practice their letters on the iPad now. It is a super cute stylus that is compatible with an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. It comes with a free download for an app that teaches the correct formation of letters and numbers (where to start on the page, which direction to move, when it is all right to pick up the pencil, etc). Mr. Pencil won’t let you move on in the game until you trace your letter or number correctly three times. My kids truly love this game and it is easy to incorporate into your day if you already have an iPad or iPhone, which makes this momma’s heart happy.

3. How to Build an A.  Full disclosure, I am actually not completely in love with this book. It gives examples like “X is for Xmas” and it confused Abby at first because a few of the examples are not finished. (See the unfinished letter A on the cover? Several letters in the book are like that.) BUT it comes with a great mesh bag full of 11 vinyl pieces: lines and curves that match up perfectly with the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. I do think How to Build an A is worth the small investment just for those pieces, even if you decide not to use the book, because I have yet to find those same lines and curves at a better price.  (Or you could just make your own pieces out of foam from the craft store, which is what I did before I found this book.)

So, there you have it, my three favorite handwriting resources for parents.

Are there any other topics you would like to see me cover as a teacher? Because, honestly, this is fun for me and if you actually do have questions about a specific subject area, I’d love to help.

You might also want to check out:

Don’t forget to pin this post to the Pinterest board where you are collecting your school resources! 

Amazon affiliate links provided for your convenience. Photo Credit: Deposit Photo

The first week is over!

This was an incredibly stressful week for our family. Penny got very sick early in the week with some kind of bronchial infection. Thursday we ran out of propane on one of the coldest days of the year and had no heat source. Friday my grandmother died. I will share more about her here on the blog next week. As you can imagine, weight loss was not often the first thing on my mind, but I will share what I did.

This week I focused on making a few easy changes and one big change.

The easy changes:

• I drank water with every meal. I really cut back on all other kinds of liquid. There was a day when we all had upset tummies and I drank half a glass of soda, hoping it would help. I might have had a glass of orange juice once or twice, but mostly I just stuck with water. 

• I did at least 15-20 minutes of exercise 6 days this week.  Personally, I like short workout videos or DVDs because we don’t have a gym membership right now and I don’t love working out in front of other people anyway. It is hard to fit exercise in between the kids and work and the house and the husband and volunteer commitments and the kids’ activities. Sometimes it was just a 15 minute “walk a mile with me” You Tube video like this one and I did the whole thing while holding a crying baby. Something is better than nothing, which is what I was doing before. I did have to limit myself to one video a day. I shared last week that I get addicted to exercise very easily and it becomes unhealthy. Sometimes I would find myself thinking about doing another video instead of work that needed to be done or again after the kids were in bed, which is the only time I get alone with my husband. True, the weight might come off faster if I did several workouts every day, but I want to keep this about finding balance. I don’t want to be obsessively working out for a few weeks, then burning out and quitting.
• I did not snack very often between meals. Before, I had a bad habit of not eating breakfast and grabbing a handful of pretzels or goldfish crackers every few hours when I was giving the kids a snack.
• I started eating breakfast again. Just light, grab-and-go stuff like a banana or a granola bar.
• I didn’t put white sugar in anything.

The big change:

• I utilized the wheat grinder I have had sitting in the pantry for a few months and made whole wheat bread from scratch. REALLY from scratch, as in from wheat berries to bread. I shared the recipe here on Monday. I realize grinding your own wheat isn’t an option for everyone, but I LOVE carbs and I wanted to be sure to have a way to keep them in my diet without all of the sugars and other processed junk that is in store-bought breads.

Things I did NOT change:

• I didn’t give up anything. If I wanted an Oreo, I ate an Oreo. If I wanted bread, I ate bread. I tried to make sure at least 80% of what I ate was actual food that could be found in nature, but I’m not at all fond of the idea of strict diets where I “can’t” eat something. Or dieting at all, for that matter. That just makes me want to say “forget this!” very quickly. I did try to pick either bread or dessert each day. 
• I broke my own rule and weighed myself on Monday morning. At that time the scale said 178.2 pounds.
• I still ate out. We ate out a lot this week because of the circumstances. For what it’s worth, the new turkey chili at Panera Bread is REALLY good.

Other things I changed:

I set a goal weight. Not having something to work towards seemed kind of dumb. How would I know when I had reached my goal I I didn’t have one? The BMI chart (which I despise) says that since I am 5’3,” a healthy weight for me is between 105 and 140 pounds.

Let me just tell you right now that 105 ain’t happening, folks. I have breasts. Big ones. I haven’t seen anything close to that number since the fifth grade when puberty hit. So we’ll focus on the other end of the spectrum. My new goal weight is 140 pounds. If I get there and I still have gigantic knockers, I am going to consider breast reduction surgery because I have been having some chronic back pain for the past few years. (Don’t you dare try to tell me it’s only because I am in the wrong bra. I have been professionally fitted three times and I have the x-rays showing two reversed curves in my spine that say otherwise.)

Ok. Time to stop rambling and step on the scale.

Drum-roll please…….I started last week at 180.2 pounds and I am now…..

 178.6 pounds

1.6 pounds down

My personal goal is 1-2 pounds per week, so I am happy with that, especially considering all of the other things we had going on this week.

Next week I plan to increase the amount of time I spend on each workout, if possible, and eat out less.

Did you make any small changes this week?

“Who will help me grind the wheat?” said the Little Red Hen…

Yes, I grind my own wheat now.

Wait! Come back.

I promise not to turn into a hippy who refuses to wear deodorant. I just want to share my new honey whole wheat bread recipe.

In September, my mom gave me a wheat grinder for my birthday because I had been hinting that I wanted one. Then my brother-in-law gave me a few different kinds of wheat berries for Christmas. Last weekend I finally broke out the WonderMill for the first time. I am addicted to all things carbohydrate and it is impossible for me to give up bread, but I figure if I want to get serious about my weight loss, at least I can make healthier bread options available at home. I like this recipe because there is no white flour or white sugar or preservatives in it (besides a little salt). I found a very similar whole wheat bread recipe on Life Blessons. I modified it a little bit to work with the kind of yeast and oil I had in the pantry. You do need to own a bread machine for this recipe. (Or I guess you could try replacing step 2 by kneading the dough for 30 minutes by hand and letting it sit, covered for 1 hour before transfering it to the loaf pan.)

Honey Whole Wheat Bread

Ingredients:

1/2 cup lukewarm water + 1/4 cup hot water for yeast (100-115 degrees F)
1/4 cup milk
1 egg
1½ tablespoons vegetable oil (Next time I’m going to try melted coconut oil or even just melted butter)
1½ tablespoons honey + 1/4 ts for proofing yeast
1½ teaspoons salt
3 cups of freshly ground flour, sifted (I used hard white wheat berries ground on the “pastry” setting in my WonderMill. I threw away the hard pieces that were left after I sifted the flour. You could also save them to add to the bread for texture or feed them to pets-anyone have chickens?- or put them on cereal or whatever.)
1 pack of active dry yeast

Directions:

1. In a small bowl, proof 1 packet of dry yeast in 1/4 cup of hot water. Add 1/4 tsp of honey and stir to dissolve and activate yeast.

2. Add the remaining ingredients to the bread machine in the order listed, saving the proofed yeast mixture for last.

3. Set the bread machine to “dough” and let it do its thing. I did have to scrape it down a few times during the first few minutes. It will take about an hour and a half to go through the dough cycle.

4. Remove the dough from the machine and transfer it to a greased loaf pan. Shape into a loaf and let it sit, covered, for one hour.

5. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. (I like to put a metal baking pan with about an inch of water in the oven as it preheats. It creates a steamy environment for the bread and helps it not to dry out. I remove the water dish as I am putting the bread in the oven.)

This recipe makes 1 loaf.

I like it for breakfast with real butter and honey.

How’s that for diet food?

If you are in the market for a bread machine, this is the one I use.

I’m joining the Spring Recipe link-up.

You have waited so patiently for the pictures of the house. I’m sorry it is taking so long! We actually do have most of our rooms ready now, but they are very hard to photograph. Our friend Chad visited us this week and was kind enough to let us borrow his wide-angle lens for these pictures.

Are you ready? I have three spaces to show you today. Welcome to the tour!

The Foyer

This is our front door. The dining room is to the left in this picture and the office is to the right. (We ordered new office furniture, but it won’t be delivered until February. Right now it is just a pile of boxes and a small desk from Ikea.)

All of our paint colors are from the historic line at Lowes, but color matched at Sherwin Williams. The foyer color is 6005-1B Oatlands Subtle Taupe.

All of the light fixtures in the house, with the exception of the pendant lights above the kitchen island, are from Lowes.

The Dining Room

This room is crazy hard to photograph because light always hits it at a weird angle no matter what time of day. It’s painted 6001-1B Cliveden Gray Morning. 

This room is a total hodgepodge of things we’ve collected over the years. The gossip bench came from an antique store in Reedville, VA, where we have family. I recovered it with fabric that Pottery Barn sells by the yard. The table is a hand-me-down from my dad & step-mom. The rug was purchased 5 years ago from JCPenny. The painting is from a flea market in Tampa, and the quote between the windows is something I made myself. I custom ordered vinyl letters from Say It On the Wall and put them on a scrap piece of 1×12 inch board I painted. It’s a prayer my Mommom would say with her pre-school class before they ate. She loved it so much she would always have us say it too when we came over for dinner.

“Thank you, God, for happy hearts, for rain and sunny weather. Thank you, God, for this our food and that we are together.”

The Powder Room  

This is our guest bath and is not anywhere near the front of the house like the other rooms I’m showing you today, but it is also really hard to photograph and I wanted to snap some pictures before Chad left and took his fancy lens with him. 🙂

This room is painted the same color as the dining room.

The his and hers towels in the frames are hand painted and were gifted to me by my aunt (the one who lives in Reedville). If I remember the story correctly, they were originally a wedding present given to my grandmother.

The hardwood throughout the first level is Mohawk Rockford Solid hardwood 3.25? planks in Red Oak Chocolate. I love the look of it, but we have learned since moving in that it is a MAJOR pain in the rear end to keep dark hardwood clean.

That’s all I’ve got for today. As soon as I can get Chad back here or get my very own wide angle lens, I’ll share more. Promise.

Look who is two!

Although we had her Smurf-themed birthday party earlier this month, today is Penny’s real birthday.

I hope I always remember you at this age and the way you…

go to bed late and wake up (very) early

already tell us when you have to go potty (except you say “off room,” your word for the bathroom) 

say “Welcome!” when you really mean “Thank you”

always try to sneak extra food to the dog

love baths

will not let me do anything with your hair

always have a crusty nose

kiss other people’s boo-boos

run to daddy with your arms out before he leaves in the morning, saying “Hug!”

think daddy is home every time you hear me open the garage door during the day

love string cheese and any other snack you are allowed to eat on the sofa

are infatuated with Dora the Explorer

use a singsong voice, tilt your head to the side, and smile when you say, “Noooo.”

are the only child in this house who does not care what color cup, bowl, plate, spoon, etc. I give you

have been singing Happy Birthday to yourself since last night.

Happy Birthday, Penelope Christine!