by Sara Mcgrath

Created on: December 29, 2008

The new Sesame Street website, still in beta, shines among websites aimed at the Internet's youngest users. Just like the classic entertaining and educational television series before it, the Sesame Street website provides high-quality content aimed at helping children learn foundational skills. On the website, children can interact with their favorite muppet characters while playing games, doing activities, and watching videos. Perhaps the neatest feature of the website is Playlists.

Playlists provide children with interactive learning adventures that focus on a particular subject, theme, or muppet character. Children can follow prepared Playlists, Special Holidays or Winter Clothes, for example, or they can create their own Playlists based on their current interests.

Parents and teachers can send children on individualized learning adventures by creating Playlists based on subjects such as Early Reading, Early Math, Science, Feelings, or Self-Confidence. These subjects can be further defined by themes such as Animals, Geographic Places, or Sports.

Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street, also presents the Pinky Dinky Doo website, which focuses on reading and imaginative storytelling, and the Panwapa website, which fosters awareness of the wider world. These children's television programs and websites are one of the ways that Sesame Workshop promotes its initiatives, including health and wellness, emotional wellbeing, respect and understanding, and literacy and numeracy.

Each of these initiative areas can be seen in the Sesame Street website. The online games are divided into subject categories that reflect the initiatives, such as Early Reading, Health and Safety, Feelings, and Getting Along with Others.

Areas of the website labeled for Grown-Ups, help parents, caregivers, and teachers guide children through the website with specific learning goals in mind. These pages show grown-ups how to create Playlists and also how to create a My Street personalized Sesame Street website tailored to an individual child.

My Street is free and easy to set up. It can even be personalized with a child's photo. Grown-ups and children can both easily add favorite games, videos, and playlists to the child's My Street webpage while browsing the website.

The new Sesame Street website provides young children with a fun and educational way to develop early literacy, computer literacy, and other foundational skills including health and wellness and respect for cultural diversity. Additionally, it provides grown-ups with a powerful tool for teaching children. From online games, videos, and interactive activities to Playlists and My Street, Sesame Street.org shines as a website.

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