cwist (kids’ challenges with a twist) is a free K-5 online education site that allows parents to use incentives—such as a new toy, a sleepover, or a skateboard—to motivate kids to complete learning and active play challenges. No more worries about raising silver-spoon kids — now you can teach your kids valuable lessons through a system they’ll love.
Plus, cwist creates money-saving marketing opportunities for toy brands and retailers. Whether you’re a parent, kid or business, cwist is there for you.
When it comes to parenting—A.K.A. The World’s Hardest Job—technology can be a double-edged sword. While it can be used for educational purposes, parents worry about kids spending too much time in front of screens for other purposes. Not to mention, current high-quality education websites are often too expensive for families, with membership fees or unneeded features.
As parents, we at cwist personally know the challenges of combining technology and parenting — and we found a way to make both you and your kid happy. cwist motivates kids to learn and get active using incentives like books, toys and play dates.
Our mission is to make your job easier, engaging your kids with educational lessons while teaching them the value of the things they have.
cwist also provides toy brands and retailers the opportunity to expose their offerings to kids and their parents, in a positive, educational setting. Even better, retail company partners are only charged when it results in a sale!
Parenting made easy.
Track your child’s progress with our reward system, while they learn the value of what they have.
With cwist, the choice is yours.
Easily select your child’s next learning challenge from a library of thousands specialist-written, crowd-sourced education and active challenges. Our content includes education & learning, reading & writing, math, community service, outdoor activities and behavioral challenges.
Go ahead, relax.
Parents can quickly and easily tie an activity to a specific incentive chosen by the parent and child, and track its level of completion. Now every time your child accomplishes a home activity, cwist knows to reward them with that new toy or gadget or event they cwisted for.
No piggy bank required for signup.
No more membership fees. We offer high quality, interactive exercises — for free. Parents decide what rewards they want to purchase for kids as incentives.
Don’t whine for it — cwist for it.
Kids now have a parent-approved way to ask for and achieve the things they want.
No more inefficient advertising.
cwist drives traffic to retail toy companies and brands, embedding educational content on their websites. Stop paying for advertising and banners with no direct connection to a sale. Get high-quality motivated customers, and save money while you’re at it.
cwist started as a scavenger hunt around the house. Chris Sleat, CEO & Dad, wanted to teach his kids how ice cream was made. With some vanilla beans, sugar and cream, the kids ended up with ice cream — but they also learned that making ice cream takes work. cwist was born from Chris’s hope to find a better way for his kids to recognize the value in the things they owned and experienced. Since that hot, summer day, cwist has achieved multiple accomplishments — all thanks to its tight-knit community of parents and teachers.
Ready. Set. Go. Our marketing launched in late November of 2013
We have big connections. cwist has multiple retail and content partners,
including KaBOOM!, PBS KIDS, Edmunds Scientific and Imagine Toys
The trophy shelf has begun. So far, we have won 3 industry awards
— including a Parent’s Choice Gold Award
cwist has 23,000+ likes on Facebook
Customers are lining up. As of now, cwist has over 18,000 active users— and gains about 30 new ones each day
Chris Sleat, Founder, CEO & Dad, has a passion for lesson-teaching and business-improving. He has served as president of Realinterface, founder of Realinterface Expert Systems and CMO of Inclinix. Chris developed cwist’s product functional design and oversees the content creation. He acts as CEO, Product Manager and Finance Director.
Michael Nappi, EVP Sales, has had great success growing sales and companies in multiple Business-to-Consumer Platforms (MapQuest, Traffic.com, and Nokia mobile advertising and location-based advertising). His proven ability to sell high-volume and high value business-to-business deals drives the platform opportunities at cwist.
Sara Corckran, Content Manager, is the educator of the cwist Team. She has worked as a Special Educator Reading Specialist and College Professor teaching aspiring teachers. At cwist, Sara coordinates with teachers and specialists who write cwist challenges, curates content and manages freelance writers.