Having a baby is stressful. With so many things to think about from the start, parents probably aren’t focused on getting their child ready for preschool.
That’s where WeeSchool comes in.
Founded in 2016, this Greenwood Village-based startup is a mobile parenting platform catered to the first three years of a child’s life, providing the education parents need to ensure their babies will be ready for preschool.
WeeSchool was founded by Julie and Will Clark, the duo behind Baby Einstein (the line of educational videos and music for children). Will, COO, had previously worked in education technology publishing, and Julie, CEO, was a teacher.
The pair sold Baby Einstein to Disney in 2001, and at the time they had the idea to potentially create a parenting platform. They let that thought sit for 10 years. After Julie survived breast cancer twice, however, she realized that she had more to give in the child developmental space and they revisited it.
“Kids who are raising kids — millennials live in a very busy and crazy, hectic world,” Julie said. “Everything is very fast, so I started thinking about how the hospital doesn’t send home an instruction manual."
“As parents, or a new parent, or an aunt, we all have the same responsibility to our kid in the first three years."
Then, there's the fact that the brain experiences the most growth during the first three years, Will said, and parents really have the control over what their child is exposed to during that time. However, most kids don’t come out of those years prepared for preschool and risk being a year behind by age four.
Considering these realities, the duo engaged in three years of research and development. It was during this time they created a curriculum of activities based on the 102 things children need to know by preschool, as well as a developmental milestone tracker and even a sleep tracker.
The WeeSchool app contains these tools, with a plan of activities to help children learn the aforementioned 102 concepts. These activities could include painting with pudding or using an interactive flashcard slideshow to strengthen children's fledgling language skills.
These lessons are varied in terms of focus, length and requirements in an effort to apply to users' unique parenting situations.
“We’ve created really small activities so that each day, you could spend 15 minutes with your baby doing an activity that we recommend that will actually stimulate your baby’s brain and create really positive engagement,” Julie said.
Then, the milestone tracker measures 117 important milestones and allows parents to track their child’s progress over the course of the three years. These 117 milestones are the same that pediatricians use, and include things like walking or saying, “mama.” Parents can then log their child’s progress into a scrapbook that they can share with friends and family.
WeeSchool also offers bundles of age-appropriate toys that consumers can purchase from their website that cover three months of the child’s life. These bundles build on each other and use toys and books that correspond with the app’s activities.
The app itself, however, offers both a free and premium (ad-free) version for for $3.92 per month on an annual subscription. Will said they hope to eventually make the app free to make it more accessible, and create a Spanish version as well.
So far, WeeSchool has raised about $2.5 million in fundraising and went to market in November 2017.
Ultimately, WeeSchool is a product with a purpose: education.
“As parents, or a new parent, or an aunt, we all have the same responsibility to our kid in the first three years,” Julie said. “Whether the content we are using is in an app rather than a book, or a video disc, it’s important information.”
