Loop and Link
Every letter, in stroke families
Wave letters, loop letters, round letters, hill letters, tail letters — lowercase and capitals. A pencil writes each one first so your child sees where it starts and which way it turns.
Your child is graded on cursive. Almost no one is teaching it.
Loop and Link walks your child through every letter, one stroke at a time, checks each attempt, and shows them what to fix. On an iPad, with a finger.
Level 1 is free. No account, no card, nothing to install.
Try it — trace the letter
Start on the green dot and follow the gray letter.
Why cursive still counts in Texas
The Texas essential knowledge and skills for English language arts ask students to write legibly in cursive starting in second grade, and to keep using it through fifth. It is not enrichment or a nostalgia project — it appears on your child's assignments, and it is scored.
Most classrooms have twenty minutes a week for it, if that. Handwriting is the first thing cut when the schedule gets tight, so the practice that actually builds the muscle memory has to happen somewhere else.
Loop and Link is that somewhere else. Ten minutes at the kitchen table, without a parent leaning over the page correcting every letter.
Loop and Link is an independent product. It is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the Texas Education Agency or any school district.
Letters, then words, then sentences
Letters are grouped by the stroke they share, so each new one reuses the muscle memory from the last. Nothing unlocks until the lesson before it is done.
Linking them into words
Words only ever use letters your child has already learned. This is where cursive stops being twenty-six shapes and starts being handwriting.
Whole sentences
Capitals, spacing, and punctuation together, in one continuous line — the thing they will actually be asked to do on a worksheet.
Each attempt is scored on how closely it follows the letter and awarded one to three stars, so your child gets an answer immediately instead of waiting for you to come look.
Who made this
I am Brandon Mayes. I have taught in Texas public schools for fourteen years, I am certified EC–6 Generalist, and I teach fourth grade right now. I am also a published children's author.
I built Loop and Link because I kept watching the same thing happen: cursive shows up on the assignment, the student has never been taught the strokes, and there is no time in the day to fix it. The order of the lessons here is the order I would teach it in a classroom — stroke families first, and no new letter until the one before it holds up.
Literary Genius Academy, LLC
One price, paid once
$29.99 one time
- All ten levels — lowercase, capitals, words, sentences
- Every child in your family, on one purchase
- No subscription and no renewal
- Works offline once it has loaded
Level 1 is free to use today. Purchasing is not open yet — the free level is the whole app up to that point, not a demo.
Questions parents ask
Does my child need an Apple Pencil?
No. Finger drawing is on by default and the whole app works with it. An Apple Pencil is better — it is pressure sensitive and it rejects a resting palm, so it feels closer to real paper — but it is not required, and nothing is locked behind it.
What does it run on?
Any modern browser. It is designed for an iPad in landscape, and it also runs on an Android tablet, a laptop with a trackpad, or a desktop with a mouse. On an iPad you can open it in Safari, tap Share, and choose Add to Home Screen — it then opens fullscreen like an app and keeps working without a connection.
What ages is it for?
It is built for the grades where Texas asks for cursive, roughly second through fifth. Older students who never learned the strokes do fine with it too — the sequence is the same either way.
Can more than one of my children use it?
Yes. One purchase covers every child in your family.
What do you collect about my child?
As little as possible. There are no ads, no third-party analytics, and no advertising SDKs in this app. Today progress is stored on your own device and never leaves it. When accounts arrive, the account belongs to you as the parent, and the only thing stored about your child is a display name you choose and which lessons they have finished. The privacy policy spells it out.
Is this a subscription?
No. It is a single purchase. The curriculum has an end — your child finishes it — so charging every month for it would be wrong.