Letter Leaders Testimonials

Julie helped our son, Alex, with an intensive handwriting program when he was in Kindergarten. Alex loved "playing games", which were the hand aerobics activities and never considered the hour-long sessions work. The results were impressive. After working with Julie for several months, Alex's chicken scratch turned into legible text. To this day we appreciate Julie for her skill and the positive way she worked with our son.

In the spring of 2007, when we were preparing to transition my daughter from her special education DLC program to a Multi-Intensive program it was suggested to me and my husband, during her IEP meeting, that because of her low muscle tone and learning delays that perhaps she would not be able to successfully learn to write and that we should consider forgoing that skill and instead utilize the computer as her main means of writing. Needless to say, my husband and I would hear nothing of the sort. Our daughter would learn to write.

After her summer break, we began working with Julie Tourigny and CCPLD. Among other things, one of the main emphases was on helping my daughter learn and master the skill of writing. It is now spring of 2008 and my daughter knows her alphabet and can successfully write all the letters in lower case remembering most if not all of them by site and sound. Although she is still working on mastering the letters in upper case she is more than half way there. She can successfully write her name and is now beginning to write simple words with the aid of visual and or verbal prompting. In addition, without any prodding or prompting for either my husband or myself, one of her favor games (that she made up herself) is to practice copying the letters using her alphabet cards. Another game she plays is the spelling game, where she asks me how to spell a word, I spell it verbally and she writes it down. She also likes to write up her own grocery lists asking how to spell the words of food, thus voluntarily practicing writing her letters every day! I am convinced that my daughter would not have been able to accomplish this without the added assistance from CCPLD. I cannot say enough good things about CCPLD other than to give my endorsement 100%.

When our son started with Miss Julie, he had not yet decided whether he was a righty or lefty. After only a short time though, he had it all figured out. And both his writing and drawing went from an intimidating challenge he tried to avoid to something fun. Still in preschool, his teachers say his letters are perfect...and it has given him an opportunity to be a real leader, helping his brother and classmates when they get stuck writing their letters.