Is your child ready for kindergarten? As the school year starts to wind down, parents everywhere are preparing their 4 year olds for their last summer at home, and hopefully it’s off to kindergarten.

Since there’s no mandate on pre-k, nursery school or preschool, kindergarteners come into school with a variety of educational backgrounds. Some are reading full books, while others haven’t read a word. Some kids have spent the previous few years in daycare or a pre-k program so socially they’re ready for school. Others have remained at home with their parents and families.

No pre-kindergarten path is the correct one. Different families and kids dictate different situations. This can make Kindergarten a very traumatizing experience for both kids and parents.

One of the biggest fears for parents of new kindergarteners is whether or not their child is ready. At the same time, one of the biggest obstacles for a kindergarten teacher is quickly assessing how ready to learn each child is.

“How do you know if your child is ready for kindergarten?” asks Dori Larea, founder of Mind Labs Florida. “Children go through many transitions throughout their lives, but one of the most important transitions is the one from a preschool program to kindergarten. During this period, behavior is shaped and attitudes are formed that will influence children throughout their education and life. Due to increasing concern that America’s children are not getting adequate education to compete in a global market, new standards emerged in our schools that “pushed back” academic skills to earlier grades. The role of kindergarten has changed from an extension of preschool to a much more academic environment.”

Based on the Common Core State Standards Initiative, Ready-K! contains 12 interactive and engaging scenes that progressively become more challenging for the child.

Each scene is comprised of 8 questions each of which test a separate skill set as follow:

1. Quantitative language

2. Early literacy (includes alphabetic knowledge, vocabulary, print awareness, and phonological awareness)

3. Visual discrimination (includes visual scanning, event sequencing, size comparison, classifying, and patterns identifying)

4. Color Awareness

5. Geometry

6. Math and Number Awareness (includes number recognition, rote counting, one-to-one correspondence, number sense, addition, and subtraction)

7. Positional understanding

8. Descriptive language

Ready-K! incentivizes play by adding an interactive element in the form of a cartoon dog named Bacci. For each scene, Bacci challenges the child to help him complete a special trick. With each correct answer, Bacci rewards the child by advancing towards completion of the trick. When 8 correct answers are recorded, Bacci will entertain the child with the entire trick.

Feature Highlights:

* Entertaining and engaging User Interface

* Identifies child’s preparedness for kindergarten

* Based on Common Core State Standards Initiative

* 12 interactive scenes

* Progressive level of difficulty

* 8 questions which test a separate skill set per scene

* Incentivized play

* Generates objective and comprehensive progress report

* 100% kid-friendly with no ads or in-app purchases

* Includes tutorial on Common Core Standards

In the Parent’s Corner, Ready-K! generates an objective and comprehensive progress report at the completion of the assessment. This progress report includes a percentage score per skill set, a verbal performance summary, and a detailed list of which concepts were answered correctly or incorrectly. By identifying the child’s strengths and weaknesses, this report can help the parent determine the child’s readiness for kindergarten.

“Most kids find tests boring or scary,” says Alan Bigio, President of Bacciz LLC. “Ready-K! was rooted in the belief that to teach a child, one must think like a child. Therefore, Ready-K! includes a wide variety of games and prank playing to capture the child’s attention and motivate them to excel in learning. To ensure that Ready-K! is the best educational app for kindergarten assessment, I partnered with Dori Larea, who holds an M.A. degree in Educational Management and Leadership and serves as Program Director of Mind Lab South Florida. Mr. Larea’s vision of developing thinking abilities and life skills through strategy games are perfectly and profoundly articulated in this app. Ready-K! is entertaining, engaging, full of play, and an excellent tool for helping parents assess their child’s readiness for kindergarten.”

Ready-K is available for your iPad in the iTunes app store for just $2.99 here.