Cinemagic students during a class at Sesame Workshop
Ed. Note: Robert Harvey is a student at De La Salle College in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he writes music.
I recently attended an educational workshop at Sesame Workshop in New York as part of an international film festival hosted by Cinemagic, a youth charity organization based in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Cinemagic aims to eliminate societal boundaries by bringing people tuogether from all backgrounds who want to break into the film and music industry. It offers opportunities like the one I received: I came over to New York and attended film festivals and classes at places like Sesame Workshop. Read More
Lynn Chwatsky is Sesame Workshop’s Vice President of Outreach Initiatives and Partners. She has been overseeing the work the Workshop does with military families since 2006.
When we think about the challenges of military life, we sometimes forget the transitions the youngest members of our military families go through. Our service members’ young children are faced with a number of uniquely difficult circumstances: repeated relocation, the deployment of a parent, homecomings, injuries, even the death of a parent – to name a few. For years, Sesame Workshop has been providing resources that help both military parents and their children stay resilient during those trying transitions, and now those bilingual (English and Spanish) resources are available on our new, free Military Families mobile application.
The Sesame Street for Military Families app includes videos, articles, storybooks and caregiver guides on how parents and children can communicate and express their emotions about challenging transitions.
Sesame Workshop has long been dedicated to the well-being of military families and their children. We reach out to families wherever they are: online, on mobile devices, even on the road. Our partnership with the USO, which brings The Sesame Street/USO Experience for Military Families to thousands of families around the world, has provided infinite smiles and messages of love and support.
As technology evolves, new ways to help children through challenging transitions have emerged. That’s why Sesame Workshop uses online resources like our FamiliesNearAndFar.org website, which provides digital tools for military children, and social media like our Sesame Street for Military Families Facebook page to create an online community for sharing these resources. Our Feel Electric! app for military kids proved that mobile apps could deliver much needed content to help children express themselves during tough transitions. From those successes we knew we needed to provide the grown-ups in these same military families with resources on the device they rely on more and more – that is why we launched the Sesame Street for Military Families mobile app.
Learn more about the app and download it for FREE from the App Store(SM) or Google Play.
This season on Sesame Street, Elmo is starring in a brand new segment: Elmo The Musical! During the creation of the segment, we went behind the scenes to show you how this rollicking, music-filled math adventure got made.
Congratulations to the Sesame Workshop team for receiving an Emmy for Growing Hope Against Hunger, a special focusing on the invisible crisis of food insecurity in the United States. Food insecurity is a difficult issue for parents and children to discuss, and Growing Hope Against Hunger sought to present personal stories about food insecure families that would help raise awareness about hunger as well strategies that have helped these families grow stronger and more secure. Congratulations to Executive Producer Carol-Lynn Parente, Supervising Producer Melissa Dino, Senior Producer Mason Rather and Producer Kevin Clash.
A few years ago, Wandy Hoh was at home, playing with her three young daughters, when she noticed something.
“It was very obvious that the things they were most interested in were various gadgets and computers,” she said. But she felt that there weren’t enough children’s books available digitally. Instead of waiting for them to come along, Hoh took the initiative and in 2010 founded MeeGenius, of which she now serves as CEO.
Two years later, MeeGenius and Sesame Workshop are happy to announce that we’ve formed a partnership that will bring six Sesame Street e-book titles to web, iOS and Android platforms. Beginning today with Celebrate School: First Day, the new titles will debut every Wednesday throughout the month of September.
Since its founding, Sesame Workshop has been dedicated to making sure kids grow up healthy and strong. In recent years, our partner Sam’s Club has helped us further that goal by in part funding the creation of Sesame Street’s “Healthy Teeth, Healthy Me” outreach kits. The bilingual (English/Spanish) outreach kits include an original Sesame StreetDVD and a family booklet. There’s also additional activities and information at SesameStreet.org/Teeth.
As part of its commitment to the health and wellbeing of children across the country, Sam’s Club is offering free health screenings for children at all locations with a pharmacy. In addition to the screenings, a limited supply of “Healthy Teeth, Healthy Me” outreach kits will be distributed as well, in the hopes of providing children and parents with the information they need to make choices that will have a positive impact on their oral health.
As a college junior I had watched many of my peers graduate and enter the professional world. Many of my friends with similar interests and work experience fell into social media entry level positions, specifically communications. Because my small liberal arts college does not offer a Communications major I began to wonder what the draw was to public relations and communications outside of college. I wanted to know more. I needed a contact in the business to chat with. It is easy to search major PR firms online and compile a list, but without a name or some sort of connection I was in trouble.
Bill Ayres is the executive director of WhyHunger, an anti-hunger organization he co-founded in 1975. Summer is an important time of year to focus on child hunger, which Sesame Workshop’s Food For Thought outreach initiative is committed to battling. Ayres sat down with the Workshop to explain how his organization fights child hunger, why it is such an important issue during the summer months and why his organization utilizes the anti-hunger materials Sesame Workshop makes available.
To put it simply, Why hunger? Why, as Americans, is hunger an issue that we should be concerned about?
Well, that is our name: WhyHunger. We have that name because we are asking the question, why is there hunger in the richest country in the world? Why is there hunger in a world that can feed itself? Hunger is an obscenity. Hunger in America is the ultimate obscenity. There are about 17 million children and 49 million people all together that are food insecure. That means they aren’t starving but they miss meals and they eat less. They don’t get the right kinds of food. That is devastating for kids especially.
Sesame Workshop is excited to announce the launch of the second season of The Adventures of The Electric Company onPrankster Planet, the newest segment on our award-winning show The Electric Company.
The Electric Company has evolved since the iconic program first aired in 1971. Since the show was revived in 2009, we have utilized a variety of media to ensure that the show’s rigorously researched educational material, which has a renewed focus on math, helps six to nine-year-olds acquire the academic skills they need to achieve their full potential. Prankster Planet is at the heart of the show’s transmedia approach.
At the end of each episode, Marcus and Jessica will go on an adventure to try and stop tricky prankster Francine from causing chaos. But the story doesn’t end once the show is over. Kids are encouraged to go online to the new Prankster Planet website where they can play games that help them learn simple math equations, graphing, and data collection, representation and analysis.
Since the introduction of Prankster Planet 1.0 last season, millions of kids have visited the show’s website to have fun, interactive adventures, all the while building up their math and literacy skills. The show has won three Emmy’s for Outstanding Children’s Series in a row – every year since it was revived – and was also a recipient of the Parent’s Choice Gold Award for Television.
In April we featured the work of Associate Design Director Louis Henry Mitchell, who created the wonderful chalk murals on the 8th floor of Sesame Workshop’s office. Many of our readers really enjoyed the post, so we wanted to show you the rest of the chalk art that can be found around the office.
The fun and imaginative wall art was created by our Creative Services team:
Graphic Designer Molly Hein (Bert and Ernie in the Subway, Ernie bowling, Gluten Free),
Associate Art Director Evan Cheng (Bert and Ernie in the Subway, Ernie Bowling, Gluten Free, Grover Michael Jackson)
Senior Design Director Vanessa Germosen (Bert and Ernie in the Subway)
Creative Director Kip Rathke (Super Grover)
Creative Director Janis Beauchamp (Elmo Peaking in)
Vice President Creative Director Theresa Fitzgerald (Super Grover)
Louis Henry Mitchell (Full Cast Welcome Sign, Elmo/Big Bird/Cookie Monster Welcome Sign, Herry)
Each of the artists brings his or her own style and technique to the portrayal of Sesame Street’s iconic MuppetsTM. The entire Sesame Workshop team loves the chalk drawings so much that we decided it was about time we shared them with everyone.
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