Curiosity Companion App

Curico

Curiosity Companion App

Curico is an AI-powered learning companion designed to make curiosity-driven hands-on learning accessible for all children regardless of background

Mountain View, CA, USA

USA

Nonprofit

Globally, 175 million children aged 3–6 are not enrolled in early childhood education, with access especially limited in low-income countries where only 1 in 5 children attend preschool [1]. This lack of access disproportionately affects children from historically marginalized and low-income communities, limiting their cognitive, emotional, and social development during a critical window of growth. Even in wealthier nations like the U.S., over 50% of 3–4-year-olds do not attend preschool, often due to cost, availability, or eligibility constraints [2]. These early gaps compound over time, contributing to disparities in school readiness, academic achievement, and long-term opportunity. While many parents want to support their children’s learning, many face practical challenges like limited time, lack of confidence, or difficulty finding age-appropriate, engaging activities. This often leads to passive screen time, which studies show can negatively affect language development, attention span, and cognitive processing [3]. Traditional education systems also tend to emphasize memorization and standardized performance metrics over inquiry-based, exploratory learning. As a result, children miss out on building curiosity, creativity, and problem-solving skills—foundational competencies essential for thriving in today’s fast-changing world. [1] https://data.unicef.org/topic/education/pre-primary-education/ [2] https://nces.ed.gov [3] https://cps.ca/en/documents/position/screen-time-and-preschool-children

Curico is an AI-powered learning companion designed to make curiosity-driven, hands-on learning accessible for all children, regardless of background or resources. Using generative AI, it recommends and facilitates engaging activities - such as science experiments, engineering challenges, nature exploration, and creative storytelling - helping children connect with and explore their surroundings in meaningful ways. The app adapts to each family’s environment and preferences, suggesting activities based on children’s interests, available materials, and past engagement. Through an interactive, voice-guided mode, Curico walks children and caregivers through each activity step-by-step, asking open-ended, thought-provoking questions to spark inquiry, creativity, and critical thinking. Unlike traditional chatbots, Curico takes the initiative to guide conversations, making learning feel natural and fun while allowing parents to participate as co-explorers instead of instructors. From the start, Curico has been co-designed with families through interviews and user testing, shaping its core design and features. Examples include clear visuals, color-coded steps, short material lists, and an AI-guided interactive mode that reduces preparation time and encourages joyful learning. We already observed positive outcomes with testers: children and parents laughing, experimenting, and actively engaging together. Demo: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kIGVdaA4TVcieXrk7tlqzfhUn5rrX5Gl/view?usp=sharing

Curico serves families with children ages 3–10, especially those from low-income or other underresourced communities who lack access to affordable, high-quality early learning. Many of these families face barriers around limited time and money to support their children’s learning at home and school. Online resources or activities are available, but finding and preparing them takes too much energy and effort, and some parents lack the knowledge or confidence to guide their children through activities. This is even worse when activities don’t reflect cultural values, daily routines, or meet unique needs like allergies or learning preferences, leaving parents frustrated and unsupported in their desire to support their children’s education. While Curico has global potential as long as there is internet access & linguistic support for the AI model, we are first focusing on our immediate communities based in the U.S. and Thailand where our team members grew up. We are currently user-testing our first public beta version of the app with around 200 users. With these families, we expect to see an increase in the number of hands-on activities between parents and children. In the next 12–18 months we aim to reach 10,000+ families in the U.S. and Thailand.