Starfish

Starfish Helping you help your child or students thrive. Education/Therapy store. NDIS Provider.
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Starfish store is a business that offers:
- Quality educational advice backed by a masters degree in special education
- Academic assessments and/or referrals for cognitive assessments
- Strong links with other professionals
- Individualised tutoring that targets specific learning goals and builds confidence (reading, spelling, maths, gaps in learning)
- Intensive teaching programs to gain maximu

m results, rapidly
- School readiness programs
- Products that cater to the scientist within, early childhood, spelling, literacy, maths and more!
- Guidance for the selection of the best games and resources to meet needs
- An array of hand-selected, top quality educational products that make great gifts
- Specialist programs and consulting for children/students with significant special needs, trauma background, history of poor school attendance, behavioural issues, disengagement from schooling.

07/09/2026

Weighted pens are a tool that might be considered when looking at tools to support handwriting difficulties.
But do they work?
And is this the right question to be asking?
🖊️
Whilst there may be plenty of clinical evidence supporting the potential benefits, there is minimal “proof” (in terms of published research).
What DO we know?
🙋‍♀️
Many students with HD (Handwriting Difficulties) have issues with “pressure” when writing (compared to their peers)
eg how hard or soft to press the tip of their pencil or pen onto the page
eg how tightly or lightly to grasp their pen or pencil
And understanding how much pressure to apply is often link to the proprioceptive sensory system.
Lin Yu-Chen et al (2022) PLOS One 17(6)
“Pen-grip kinetics in children with and without handwriting difficulties”
🙋‍♀️
Using weight is one way to feed input to the proprioceptive sensory system.
Valdes, Kristen (2024) Journal of Hand Therapy 37(2)
“Proprioception: An evidence based revision”
🙋‍♀️
Some preliminary evidence showed using a weighted pencil improved handwriting legibility, of the three students in the study with HD.
Brown, Michelle (2017) Journal of Occupational Therapy, Schools and Early Intervention.
“Use of weighted pencils to improve handwriting legibility”.
✏️
The better question would be…
Does a weighted pen (or pencil) help YOUR student?
Often it’s best to trial a weighted pen, and see: - if it helps
- if your student likes using one
Let me know what your experience has been and if you’d like me to share how I trial weighted pens with my students.
Kirstie

ps we have a blog post on our website about weighted pens that gives more information.

06/09/2026

Start training NOW for 3hr marathons of essay writing.
Many students add weight or use a weighted pen in the months leading up to their exams.
Then on the day of their exams, revert to a regular pen - and it feels like writing with a feather.
Such a clever idea.
Our weighted pens are perfect for this:
- they’re lovely to write with
- they’re sleek, classy and ready to go
- they’re discreet (you’d never know they’re weighted unless you tried one)
- they’re 70g with lid and 50g without
- they come with 2 extra ink refills
Order yours 🖊️ and you’ll have it within a few days.

05/09/2026

There’s still time, just, to make sure you are in with chances to be on a $300.00 golden ticket shopping spree with us.
Cannot wait to be calling the winner tomorrow (Monday 7th September).
Have fun 🤩

05/09/2026

🎫 Ideas for low cost entry into our $300.00 Golden Ticket spending spree,
Here’s some things that I use myself:
- Noise Reduction Earmuffs
These will be a really smart investment for you, I’ve not met a person yet who doesn’t think they’re the most COMFORTABLE they’ve ever tried
- Switch it level 1 and 2
Makes learning and practicing to decode fun. Think uno.
- Sound Ring level 1 and 2
I use these every single day.
- Weighted Pen
You’d be surprised with just how helpful this pen can be to help with handwriting, study and even hand tremors.
- 3 in 1 watercolour pencils
YES, these work beautifully on whiteboards. I’ve stocked them for years, but only just discovered this feature, perfect for left handers.
- Fidgets & Focus tools
Clever, considered and carefully chosen tools enhance learning.
Kirstie x

05/09/2026

…I was a small business owner.
Truth.
The joys, the stress, the highs the lows, the wins the losses, the time - it changes you.
🚲
Courtesy of a stitch from Johnny over on TT

04/09/2026

Feedback welcome. Putting it out there.
Given socials can be a space that leaves you vulnerable, just like Jess “wouldn’t recommend these” if she didn’t believe in them,
I wouldn’t be putting this call for feedback unless we were so confident in them.
We are backing them (and ourselves) because we know how long it took us to get these right.
We know how many samples we tried, how many requests we sent to our manufacturer for big and little changes.
We know all the feedback we got from our months of trials.
And we are getting the sort of feedback from Jess that makes our heart sing - with happiness for them and a little pride as well to be honest.
But, as these are our design, we can make tweaks if needed. Does cost a lot and does take a lot of time but it can happen.
ps if you have ours, it would be so helpful for our business if you told all your friends, shared on your socials (we’d love a tag) and/or did a review on our website. Thank you thank you thank you. Kirstie x

04/09/2026

The split digraph u-e is UNUSUAL because it can represent two slightly different sounds.
In the other vowels, it’s all pretty standard (most of the time):
a-e make
e-e these
i-e ride
o-e home
But the u-e can vary when it comes to how we say the word.

You will often hear the split digraph as the bossy “e” or “magic e” or even sneaky “e”.
You might hear the saying “the e on the end makes the vowel say its name and not its (short) sound”
Following that little saying, we’d expect the split digraph for u-e to be like these (the name of the letter U)
U
Cute, Cube, Fuse, Huge, Tube, Amuse, Costume, Excuse, Perfume, Confuse
But it can also represent the oo sound like these
oo
Rude, Flute, Prune, Include, Conclude, Salute, Pollute, Absolute

Address

Gerringong Industrial Park. Unit 6, 67 Rowlins Road
Wollongong, NSW
2534

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 2pm
Tuesday 10am - 2pm
Wednesday 10am - 2pm
Thursday 10am - 2pm
Friday 10am - 2pm

Telephone

+61490515957

Website

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