Cognitive training for kids? If someone could train my five year-old’s brain into not thinking climbing into bed next to me at 3am for a few hours of kicking me in the face and/or back, that would be progress.

Sadly, Kiko’s Thinking Time isn’t tackling that grand challenge, but it is a really interesting new app that aims to help children hone other mental skills.

Released by developer Kiko Labs, it’s backed by Proper Science (well, neuroscientists at prestigious American universities Harvard and Berkeley, anyway) with a collection of mini-games aimed at 3-7 year-olds.

The star of the neuro-show is a fox named Kiko who’s looking for rotting food in binbags treasure. Over 10 games, children help her while stretching their memory, reasoning, flexibility, selective attention, spatial ability and inhibitory control skills.

(A nice touch: the first time you run the app and create their profile, you choose which skills you’d like them to practise most, then the app builds a “customised training program” for them.)

Kiko Labs promises that the games will adapt according to your children’s skills, which is why it’s targeting a relatively wide age range in terms of developmental skills – a three year-old and a seven year-old are some distance apart after all.

The US Department of Education has apparently given its support to the app, which also aims to help parents track the progress of their children as they train their brains.

Kiko’s Thinking Time is a free download for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, but it’ll make its money from an in-app subscription which costs £5.99 a month or £39.99 a year – if you’re in the US, that translates to $7.99 and $49.99 respectively.

That gives you unlimited access to all 10 games – non-payers only get five – as well as future ones that’ll be added at the rate of one a month. We’ll be keen to see how kids take to it.