hide-n-(sensory)-seeking

What is dysgraphia? Put very simply, it is a learning disability in which an individual struggles with writing due to difficulty coordinating motor planning and information processing skills. Symptoms often include poor handwriting, confusion of capital and lowercase letters, poor spelling, difficulty putting thoughts into writing, difficulty with storing words and ideas and organizing them into written form, and many more. For an excellent, and much more in depth look at this learning disability visit this article .  Here today though, I'm going to share with you how it affects our household. In particular, Grace. Holding a normal pencil and trying to write on regular paper is incredibly difficult for Grace. She works so hard on the mechanics of the task that she is unable to give hardly any mental energy to the point of the exercise which is to learn how words are spelled. Even basic writing exercises quickly dissolved into angry outbursts or tears due to ...

The last several weeks have been short school weeks here. But productive ones. Zak sculpted a volcanic landscape out of Kinetic Sand. He said it was "from before any animals and humans, back when there was just tons of volcanoes everywhere." Despite the lack of scientific vocabulary, it was a very cool rendering. He even explained which ones were active, which were dormant, and which were still forming. I found a great idea on Pinterest for helping with handwriting skills. While the original idea was for younger children closer to preschool and kindergarten age, I immediately saw how it could be a great aid to Grace and her dysgraphia. We put salt in an upside-down lid, chosen because of it's shallow sides. I wrote the words she needed to practice in big letters on line-less paper. First, she was to use her finger or the eraser side of a pencil to trace the words in the salt, checking them off on the sheet as she went. By using the eraser side o...