Homeschool Reviews: Kindergarten Handwriting with Rhythm & Writing

Perusing the Rhythm & Writing website it was immediately clear to me that Rhythm & Writing with the Get Write Crew was going to be a great fit for my high-energy five-year-old,  Abigail. This program is FUN! No worksheet monotony or mindless repetition. Proper letter formation is taught through catchy phrases, a cute story, and entertaining musical videos.

Created by an Occupational Therapist, Rhythm & Writing can be used as a full curriculum or as a supplement for children who struggle with handwriting to form better habits around letter formation. As the author writes in her introduction to the program,

“When I was in elementary school, we spent weeks at a time learning to write. We were taught how to form each letter, then practiced and practiced with the teacher walking around critiquing, correcting, and providing hand over hand assistance when needed, until correct letter formations became automatic. These days, class sizes have increased, and curricula have been modified to facilitate improved standardized test scores. Teachers today often just do not have enough time in the day to teach handwriting effectively.”

Rhyhtm & Writing would make a great resource not just for homeschoolers, but for children in traditional school settings who need help solidifying good handwriting habits.

The program begins with a pre-assessment that checks the child's ability to correctly write all lower and upper case letters. After determining which letters your child is struggling to form, you can decide either to focus only on problem letters or to follow the program in its entirety.

Given that Abigail hasn't done much formal handwriting instruction, we elected to do the whole program from the beginning. Lessons are structured around a story about The Crew, an animal band that sings songs about letter formation. Each unit begins with a short tale about the animals and their adventures which inevitably includes a catch phrase about how to shape the letter currently being taught.

You can then log in to the Rhythm & Writing website where you'll find music videos that set these little catch phrases to music. These videos are so much fun for my daughter! They are colorful and upbeat with plenty of helpful repetition.

Finally you go to the practice pages where your child has the opportunity to trace and write their letters. I love that the practice sheets use red for the base line, yellow for the dotted center line and green for the top line. These visual cues made it so easy to explain where to start, slow down and stop each letter. Why don't all handwriting programs do this?!

If you like you can purchase a dry erase sheet to lay over the practice pages so that your student can practice their strokes again and again. When they've mastered the letter shapes and strokes, you can remove the plastic sheet and let them write for real on the workbook pages. I really appreciated that the workbook is spiral bound so it can lie flat. It also has nice, thick pages that can hold up to marker with no bleed-through.

Once you've gone all the way through the program, there is a review of each letter as well as a post-assessment so you can evaluate their progress. There is plenty of opportunity to practice worked into the book, but if you'd like more there is a blank page at the end with the helpful green, yellow and red lines for extra practice.

I warmed my heart to see that one of the members of the Crew is in a wheelchair and his friends join him for a game of wheelchair basketball. In addition to doing a beautiful job portraying characters that a diverse audience of children can connect to, 20% of each Rhythm & Writing purchase is donated to Dream Makers Youth Foundation, a non-profit organization that is making a difference in the lives of children with special needs and their families.



We are very satisfied with our experience with Rhythm & Writing! If you'd like to hear how other homeschool families are using this product, head over to the Homeschool Review Crew to learn more!