Educators
Resources to support you and your students
Why Choose Us
15+ Years of Experience
Experienced Paediatric Occupational Therapist working part-time in my own private practice since 2004; long term home-educating mum of 5 children; children’s book author; and enjoy presenting at various training events for parents, educators and therapists.
Passion & Dedication
I desire to see children blossom by providing support, both professionally and personally to children of all ages and abilities, their families, educators and significant others, and to engage, encourage, equip and empower them to lead satisfying & fulfilling lives.
Events with you in mind!
I love to arrange and co-ordinate various evidence-based CPD events, both online and in-person for parents, carers, educators, teachers, librarians and therapists, often with a global audience – and currently co-admin several handwriting-specific closed FB groups.
What we offer for you and your students!
Our Ricardo Reading Mouse® range of apps, books, games, posters, songs, workbooks, videos plus more, can be added to any existing curriculum to supplement your students’s learning.
Throughout all of my resources, they have the same alphabet letter characters and bright, colourful pictures which children love!
Pre-reading & Pre-writing with Ricardo Reading Mouse®
Ricardo Reading Mouse® pre-reading and pre-writing resources are designed to provide support for a child’s foundational early learning skill development in this area.
Our current range includes games and workbooks designed to assist development of eye-hand co-ordination, fine motor skills, motor planning, listening skills, following instructions, turn taking and letter name, initial letter-sound association and letter formation/shape recognition skills which in turn, help develop their ability to learn to read, write & spell confidently when they enter school!
Reading, writing and spelling requires the use of both eyes to track simultaneously following letters and words across the page or board together with the arms, hands & wrists when writing and this is of course a complex cognitive-motor skill.
We all value the importance that handwriting plays in the overall development of effective literacy abilities and being an OT, I can’t emphasise enough how vital movement & play-based learning is to a child’s overall health, well-being and their readiness for school.
Visual Processing is an important skill
Ricardo Reading Mouse® resources can supplement any existing curriculum and are designed to help support the development of a child’s visual processing skills and hence, their ability to learn to read, write & spell confidently!
Pre-reading & Pre-writing Games & Workbooks
Visual Skills Workbooks
Ricardo’s Bingo
Ricardo’s Snap Cards
Handwriting Resources
In my clinical work, I have taken great interest in the area of handwriting having worked with many children over the past 17 years, who struggle in this area. Teaching children to form their letters correctly from the outset, when they are initially learning to handwrite, is extremely important.
Handwriting is a complex cognitive motor skill which requires explicit instruction and practice to master confidently.
I have received referrals for many students who can not correctly form their letters, and as they are so focused on trying to recall the form of the letters, this then impacts upon their overall literacy skills and can affect their ability to punctuate and add correct grammar or spelling.
As we know, research evidence supports the fact that handwriting greatly helps the development of reading and spelling abilities and when letter formation speed, accuracy and automaticity or fluency improves then so too, do the above mentioned literacy skills.
Please stay tuned for handwriting instructional games and workbooks coming in the future!
Queensland Beginner Font Handwriting Tutorial Videos
Discover the Power of Handwriting for Literacy! Get your Free 2p Guide
Witness the power of handwriting for learning with our FREE Guide: ’Top 5 Reasons Handwriting Nurtures Literacy.’ Download now and support your students’ journey to confident reading, writing and spelling.
To provide support and guidance for children in my home state of Queensland, Australia, I have developed a short, engaging, animated 'Handwriting is Fun' video series. It teaches the correct letter formation of all 26 letters of the English Alphabet using the Queensland Beginner Font, which is the handwriting script taught in our education system.
It is freely available on my Learning with Ricardo Reading Mouse® YouTube Channel. Thus far, only the lowercase letters' series has been released, via 3 short handwriting tutorial videos: Letters a-g; Letters h-p and Letters q-z.
Great for lessons at home or school!
ABC & Learn to Read Resources
Feature Products for your classroom!
Currently in our ABC & Learn to Read feature products range, we have two published books and 4 apps available for IOS & Android.
As we teach and instruct young learners, it is wonderful to see them come ‘alive’ to the realisation that letters or the forms/symbols/squiggles used on the page for reading, writing and spelling, actually represent the sounds in our spoken language and that often in our English language, the same letter on a page, can represent more than one sound, which is so important to understand in the early stages of their literacy learning!
Learn the ABCs with Ricardo Reading Mouse® ABC Picture Book
Enjoy reading my beautifully illustrated ABC Picture Book to the children in your care, at any time during your day: whole class, small groups, individually or as a library take-home.
Ricardo’s ABC Picture book is a perfect place to start as it introduces:
1. All 26 initial or beginning letter sounds of all 26 letters of the English Alphabet, using two beautiful illustrations, each starting with the initial letter sound that the letter shape/form represents;
2. All 26 uppercase and lowercase letter formations and letter names of the English Alphabet.
My ABC Picture Book is simply an introduction to our written language and the sounds it represents.
Supplement your Learn to Read resources with Ricardo’s English Word Grid™
Use for whole class, small groups or individual work!
Unique & phonics-based
Ricardo’s English Word Grid™ Volume 1 Reference book teaches all 230 short vowel, 3-letter rhyming word families’ in a well-designed, evidence-informed systematic phonics-based approach.
Ricardo’s English Word Grid™ Volume 1 Reference book is chapterised according to the ending or rime of the 3-letter Consonant-Vowel-Consonant (CVC) word.
eg. Letter T Word Grid™ teaches all 46 ‘at, et, it, ot, ut’ rhyming word families’ words in one chapter.
It is available as a hard copy or e-book format and currently there are 3 apps, which each relate to a chapter of the book.
For use at home or in class, this uniquely designed Ricardo’s English Word Grid™ is truly simply fantastic!
Vibrant & engaging illustrations: apps & book!
Each of the 230 words that are taught in Ricardo’s English Word Grid™ Volume 1 are accompanied by a beautiful illustration at the beginning of each word faimilies’ chapter.
Children love learning using the illustrations and find them very engaging and motivating.
The pictures can be used to enhance the meaning, comprehension and memory of the word and can be incorporated into story telling.
Following on in each chapter, only the letters are used in the word grid so that the child learns to read the words without any visual prompts from the illustrations.
Simple & easy to use
Children are easily able to make words using the onset or beginning letter sound together with the rime or two letter ending sound of the word.
Wordlists for all the words in each word families’ chapter are listed for easy reference in an appendiix.
The apps of course incorporate interactive lessons which can be used at home or in class.
Aligns with National Literacy Standards.
Introduce Ricardo Reading Mouse® ABC & Learn to Read apps to your classroom!
Ricardo’s Alphabet Game Board
Ricardo Reading Mouse® is sure to delight children as they enjoy learning their ABCs with him.
Ricardo’s Letter B Word Grid™
Learn to read & spell 24 ‘ab, eb, ib, ob, ub’ 3-letter word family words with interactive lessons and rewards
Ricardo’s Letter N Word Grid™
Learn to read & spell 34 'an, en, in, on, un' 3-letter word family words with songs, interactive lessons and rewards
Ricardo’s Letter T Word Grid™
Learn to read & spell 46 'at, et, it, ot, ut' 3-letter word family words with songs, interactive lessons and rewards
Ricardo in young hands, hearts & minds!
Thank you to all of you, who have been enjoying learning: ABC letter sounds, letter names and letter shapes with Ricardo Reading Mouse apps, books, games, songs and videos and those reinforcing their learning of the short vowel 3-letter rhyming word families’ words using my uniquely designed word grid apps and book- and also those using my ‘download & print’ pre-reading and pre-writing card games and workbooks.
It is always a joy to hear good reports coming in from all over the world! Please continue to send in your photos, testimonies and Ricardo Reading Mouse® colouring ins!
Teaching prep classes
I love to do interactive teaching sessions with students – here I am at a local school library, after being invited to share my Ricardo’s English Word Grid™ apps, songs and book with 5 prep classes! Needless to say, we all had a wonderful time!
Rachel & Maria, Logan North Library
Tummy time reading at Logan City Council Library whilst enjoying Ricardo Reading Mouse® books, which are both available for loan at Logan City Council and Brisbane City Council Libraries! (featured under My Burrow® Sensory Learning Tool)
Handwriting Tutorials & Trainings
As a Paediatric Occupational Therapist, I have developed a Queensland Beginner Font Handwriting Tutorial Series- lowercase letters’ series currently freely available on my Youtube channel. I also love to conduct handwriting trainings – please see Events!