Fund the Future of Reading with VOWEL POWA(R)™

I appreciate you taking the time to read my story, I hope you’ll accept my FREE gift at the bottom of the page…

When my daughter Saskia was in Kindergarten, I was completely baffled because after teaching for 10 years in Montessori classrooms, I couldn't teach her to read. As a mother, rather than an educator, my heart broke as she struggled and cried in frustration. I decided that I would not allow my family and Saskia’s future to be defeated by this problem.

We paid loads of money, got loads of expert advice, and spent loads of time figuring this out.

To solve her problem, in the midst of Covid, we uprooted our lives. In January 2021, my daughter and I moved to NJ. My husband stayed in Virginia with our two other children and joined us 6 months later. We moved because the public school in Virginia was not equipped to help her, and the private schools saw her case as too severe. To find trained teachers, we crossed 3 states: Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania, moving over 220 miles just so that Saskia could learn how to read and write.

Once Saskia was situated, I had an idea that I believed could help all struggling and dyslexic readers. One in five children worldwide is dyslexic and many more struggle to read.

Think about some of the Greats of the last 100 years: John Lennon, Erin Brockovich, Albert Einstein - did you realize that they were all dyslexic? They overcame their reading issues to achieve greatness. We will never know about other children who could have also transformed the world but who did not get the help they needed to learn to read: A tragic loss of potential.

I am committed to finding a solution for everyone.

We all know ‘play’ is powerful. I made playing and reading the cornerstone of my private practice working with kids who struggle to read. I taught strategies through play which dramatically improved my students’ level of engagement as well as their language skills. When I tried it out in the community with free game nights at local libraries, what I observed was incredible. Children of differing skill levels working together with the right strategies improved engagement and motivation. This one simple, affordable game could give teachers exactly what they need to teach kids to read using the tools that currently, only literacy specialists offer.

VOWEL POWA(R)™ is the result of this idea. The game was constructed around our kitchen table with recycled materials. It was perfected around my students' kitchen tables and on Zoom from Virginia to New Zealand. And it worked! The kids loved it and the shift in the lessons was palpable. They asked to play as soon as we logged on.

My eldest son, who also has dyslexia, called me the other night and said, “Mom, what you’ve done is the most amazing thing ever!” I was brought to tears because I thought about all the time, energy and money that my family has sacrificed in order to back my desire to fix this problem across the world.

And so, I need to ask you for something, because my dream is to get this game out to the mainstream. We utilized all of our resources to get it this far. The printers are ready to go. As I sit here with the samples in my hands and stores that are ready to put them on their shelves, I decided to throw my self-consciousness aside and just ask.

Would you give even $5? Any amount makes a difference.

Did you know that 8,000 kids drop out of high school in the US every day?! What if one of them is meant to discover the cure for cancer or Alzheimer's disease, but just can’t read?

Poor reading skills are connected with unfavorable life outcomes…for individuals, families, communities and generations. Dropping out of high school often leads to poverty, crime, and even violence.

We have the solution, and we can make literacy a priority. I want to do for the world what I did for my family.

Below is my daughter pictured before we even knew she was dyslexic. By 9th grade, she wanted to drop out of school... but now, she’s a thriving sophomore in college pursuing her dream of Nursing!

One game in the 3rd grade alone will reach three hundred kids every school year. A game should last 3 years when we produce them at this quality, which is one of the reasons why we're investing this much money. So, one game would get exposed to 900 kids over three years. If you donate $50, that’s less than 6 cents per child to impact literacy. You could help prevent the over one million kids who drop out of high school every year for less than 6 cents per child!

As an encouragement to pass along kindness, I hope you’ll download our super fun VOWEL POWA(R)™ FREE Mini Game - Level 1. Think of this free game download as a gift to share with someone special in your world who is or has been influenced by a struggling reader. It could be a child, a parent, a teacher…

Click here to download the FREE Mini Game