THE BEGINNING

KiddiVersity was founded January, 1993 by Toni F. O’Hanlon while she was pursuing her doctorate of Psychology at City University in New York City.  Her curriculum focus was Neurological Psychology with emphasis on early childhood brain development.  She quickly became fascinated by the complexity of the human brain and how it develops and evolves.  She learned that the brain experiences its most rapid growth during the first three years of life.  At no other time does the brain go through such a rapid metamorphous.  In addition, she learned that during the first three years parents play a crucial role helping babies and their brains evolve.  Such things as repetition, rhyming and a unique parental voice tone are just a few of the things that work to help babies brain evolve.  It is during this time Mrs. O’Hanlon began hatching her concept. 

HATCHING THE CONCEPT

As Mrs. O’Hanlon began to think about elements of brain growth, she believed a market existed for parents of infant children where there was lacking educational products and layman’s information about brain development.  A true multi-media company could be created to offer parents of infant’s, tools in printed and electronic form, information helpful in developing the child’s brain through use of creating methods, all leveraging repetition, rhyming and a tone of communication innately within all parents.  It was during the hatching phase that she connected the metamorphous of our brains to the only insect that truly goes through a metamorphous… the Caterpillar!  She wanted to use the caterpillar as a simple analogy of metamorphous.  The caterpillar character called Cappy was born and copyright.  A trademark followed in 2012. 

The name Cappy was created out of the unique caterpillar metamorphous whereby all humans go through dramatic changes physically and intellectually starting at birth and never ending.  Therefore, in order to evolve and change we need to wear many hats (caps).  She thought one day a children’s story book series could be created around Cappy.

The hatching aspect was to create tools (products) whereby, parents could truly become their child’s first educator, beginning at birth.  She believed helping children to learn their first words sooner through specially designed flash cards that would be delivered by parents would help the brain of infants evolve, resulting in possibly quicker word recognition and learning.  Since the company would be focused on helping parents educate their babies, the company name KiddiVersity was created.  Kiddi…represents a slang for a baby or child.  Versity….is a core part of the word uniVERSITY.  When Kiddi and Versity are linked together to form the word KiddiVersity, you can sense Mrs. O’Hanlon was creating a university for Kids, birth to three years of age.  Their educator would be their parents and the educational tools would be created by KiddiVersity for parents to use.  Mrs. O’Hanlon also began to create flash cards, which would be the first such tool for parents.  Along the hatching path Mrs. O’Hanlon's dream of creating the company was positively derailed with the birth of her son Walter, at the beginning of the summer of 1997.

WALTER ARRIVES

Mrs. O‘Hanlon had the opportunity to rear her son and truly practice what she is preaching through her company.  She used her flash card tools (now called KiddiCards) and teaching techniques and applied them to Walter.  She learned first-hand what worked and didn’t.  She also created some custom storybooks about Cappy with her own sketches.  She read these books to Walter and he seemed to really enjoy them.  She engaged early in her son’s school education starting with Kindergarten.  While not an educator by profession (she was a fifteen year technology veteran before pursuing her doctorate studies) she was offered a unique opportunity to teach kindergarten in the school year 2003 to 2004, while her son was in first grade.  It was during this time she realized her teaching techniques could be valuable for parents who might use her program on their infant children.  As Walter grew older, Mrs. O’Hanlon seriously began contemplating re-birthing Kiddiversity.

KIDDIVERSITY REBORN

On September 28, 2009 KiddiVersity was incorporated as a Delaware LLC.  From the moment of incorporation, Mrs. O’Hanlon began working on product creation.  She knew she wanted to formally create a loveable caterpillar character, which went by the name Cappy.  She also wanted to create a storybook line evolving around Cappy and possibly even create some character friends that could be found in everyone’s backyard.  In addition, she wanted to find a way to leverage technological advances (since the first part of her career was in high technology and emerging markets) to create an application that would mimic the flash card tool she had created and used with Walter.  By June 2009, Mrs. O’Hanlon found and engaged a truly remarkable illustrator, Stephanie Payne.  With Mrs. O’Hanlon’s vision of Cappy and several friends she explained to Ms. Payne what she desired and with the creativity Ms. Payne possessed, the KiddiVersity logo was created and Cappy the Caterpillar was born.  As the first Iphone rolled into production June 29, 2007 and the Apple App store opened July 10, 2008, Mrs. O’Hanlon knew the Iphone would be the correct platform and the App store the appropriate medium to sell her flash card application.  KiddiCards became that application, built upon Mrs. O’Hanlon’s design, Ms. Payne’s graphical user screens and the development by a third party Iphone developer.  KiddiCards was introduced for sale for the first time May 2011, at the Apple App store.

THE PRODUCTS

KiddiVersity multi-media products consist of the following:

KIDDIBOOKS

KiddiBooks is our storybook adventure series consisting of ten (10) books, all of which revolve around Cappy the Caterpillar.  Mrs. O’Hanlon's first two storybooks evolved from her early writings that she read to Walter. She created eight (8) additional new stories. Ms. Payne's creative energy adapted illustrations that conformed to each story line created by Mrs. O'Hanlon and their collaborative efforts resulted in ten (10) imaginary, colorful storybooks.  These books are available for sale in print form at www.kiddiversity.com and at www.amazon.com. In addition, all ten (10) books are available in digital form (epub) for the Kindle Fire at Amazon, Apple Ipad and Apple Iphone at the Apple App store.  Each of these digital books are detailed at the KiddiVersity website under the Ebook section.  Each book is linked to the appropriate digital store for your ease of purchase

CAPPY   

Cappy is an adorable, loveable caterpillar character.  He is our first such character and who we will brand to KiddiVersity in hopes of one day licensing this character to those companies that might find value in him.  Cappy is the genius of the collaboration between Mrs. O’Hanlon and Ms. Payne.  He is certain to be squeezable and loved by any child that holds him.  We are also offering for sale a red cap for your baby to wear, which sports Cappy’s face on the front of the cap.  Cappy, as a 9 inch plush toy and the Cap are available for sale out our website under the section KiddiStuff.

In addition to Cappy, nine (9) character friends have been created:  Walter S. Finch, Olive the Caterpillar, Benson the Tree, Wadley the Bumble Bee, Violet the Dragon Fly, Blade the Blade of Grass, Elu the Warrior Ant, Ginger the Lady Bug and Charlotte the Hen.  Some of these characters have been introduced in the ten (10) storybooks.  Mrs. O’Hanlon intends to write ten (10) more storybooks that will focus on relationships between Cappy and each character, one by one.  We anticipate that as we release such books in the future, we will introduce each character for sale as a plush toy.  To become acquainted with our characters, please view them in the about section of our website under Executive Team and Cast Members.

KIDDICARDS

KiddiCards is our educational flash card product of babies first 144 words and is available for the Ipad and Iphone and can be purchased at the Apple App store.  This product will help walk parents through the process of exposing 144 commonly used early baby words, like mommy and daddy.  The product has some unique features:

• Parents can record their own voice stating each word so that baby can always hear the parents voice even if the parent is not with the baby at each session
• Each word has a representative picture shown after the word is presented
• 144 babies first words are divided into 12 modules or 12 words per module, which makes teaching these words simple and not overwhelming to parent or baby

THE VISION FOR KIDDIVERSITY

Just as Disney started out with Mickey Mouse, KiddiVersity has begun with:

1. Cappy the Caterpillar character….and
2. Nine other unique “backyard” characters…and
3. Ten storybooks for infants age birth to three…and
4. An educational digital flash card product of babies first 144 words

When you think of the extensive intellectual property already amassed by one person, the mind should wonder at the possibilities for this very cool company.

From the beginning Mrs. O’Hanlon envisioned KiddiVersity as a multi-media world recognized company that could possibly include a syndicated educational television program about Cappy and his nine friends.