Kidaptive Reinforces Its Commitment to Early Learning, Introducing New Adaptive Games Featuring Research-Based Kindergarten-Readiness Skills

NEW YORK, April 25, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Kidaptive, an innovative edtech company focused on early learning, today introduced Wish Upon a Fish, the sixth appisode in its award-winning Leo's Pad: Preschool Kids Learning Series for iPad. Leo's Pad is available today on the App Store and will be featured live at the Games for Change Arcade event, taking place April 26, 2014 at the Tribeca Family Street Fair during the Tribeca Film Festival.

Leo's Pad comprises beautifully animated learning games, called appisodes, created in collaboration with scientists from Stanford to teach children developmentally appropriate Kindergarten-readiness skills at home. In Wish Upon a Fish, characters Leo, Fusch, and Cinder guide players through a series of adaptive games tied to a research-based early learning framework embedded into the storyline. With encouragement from Leo and friends, players embark on a quest to catch the elusive Wishing Fish, a Koi fish with magical powers.

Also included in Leo's Pad is the newly updated Parent's Pad feature, now accessible through a browser on a phone or computer, as well as inside the app. Parent's Pad includes analysis of kids' gameplay across dozens of learning dimensions, and also provides parents with ideas for engaging with children through additional offline learning activities.

"All parents want to prepare their kids for success in school, but they don't always know the best way to do that," said Dylan Arena, PhD, co-founder and chief learning scientist at Kidaptive. "It turns out that the most important preparation isn't mastery of routine skills like reciting the alphabet or counting to 30; foundational skills like attention control, emotional awareness, problem solving, and curiosity are actually better ingredients for academic success."

In Wish Upon a Fish, players learn and practice these foundational skills, honing in on: attention control, mental shape manipulation, problem solving, identifying facial expressions in others, impulse control, and delay of gratification.

• Attention control – In the first game, learners are invited to feed the fish to entice it to come closer. The challenge for players is to focus on one task at a time without getting distracted.
• Mental shape manipulation – In game two, Leo and friends decide to build a submarine to try to catch the Wishing Fish. Learners practice skills including tracing, rotating and scaling the shapes of the submarine.
• Problem solving – Game three targets problem solving skills through the introduction of a Rube Goldberg Machine. Players work on generating novel solutions to a problem and predicting whether another character's solutions will work.
• Identifying facial expressions – Next, Leo and friends decide to try a more social approach to catch the Wishing Fish, by playing a game with it. Kids imitate the facial expressions of the fish and snap pictures of themselves to compare. 
• Impulse control and delay of gratification – Finally, in a nod to the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment on delayed gratification, learners play an adaptive game that challenges their self regulation and impulse control.

Wish Upon a Fish is available for download as an update to Leo's Pad: Preschool Kids Learning Series for iPad on the App Store today.

About Kidaptive
Kidaptive is an innovative edtech company offering a comprehensive early-learning curriculum and assessment framework to engage children and empower parents. Through intelligent storytelling and research-based educational games developed in collaboration with scientists from Stanford, Kidaptive provides entertaining and adaptive content that helps preschool children and their parents learn. Kidaptive has received more than $10 million in funding from partners including Formation 8, Menlo Ventures, Stanford-StartX Fund, NewSchools Venture Fund, and Prana Studios. More details at http://kidaptive.com.  

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SOURCE Kidaptive