She volunteers for field trips. She bakes cookies for the holidays. She helps design props for school plays and, sometimes, she’s the teacher in your child’s class! She is a mom. And, on Sunday, we’re celebrating everything moms do!

Before the school year officially ends, we’re so excited to show our appreciation for teachers and educators during Teacher Appreciation Week from May 6–10!

The average student loses a month of academic-calendar learning each summer.

Aoife is a Pediatric Occupational Therapist from Dublin, Ireland. You can follow her blog https://occupationaltherapyforkids.blogspot.com/. She shares children’s OT tips and tricks for all OT needs! Follow her on Facebook and on Instagram

Before a child learns to write, they need to build pre-writing foundation skills to prepare them for successful handwriting in the classroom. Pre-writing activities are designed to foster body awareness, build fine motor skills, and promote good posture. Once children have mastered these important steps, they can begin to write with automaticity—without having to stop and think about the mechanics of handwriting.

Now’s your chance to sing your heart out and invite your students to join in!

Check out our teaching tips to end the year with a writing unit of independent writing projects.

We made hundreds of new OT friends last week during our time at the AOTA Annual Conference & Expo! Our team shared how to make handwriting fun and easy while spending a few days in “The Big Easy.” Here’s a recap of our AOTA experience.

Learning Without Tears is featuring a new blogger this month. Her name is Courtney, and she’s an occupational therapist