Sesame Street Launches iPhone App

Your loveable, furry old pal Grover is now waiting tables inside your iPhone.

As part of its 40th birthday celebration, Sesame Street has just launched its first iPhone app. Grover’s Number Special was developed by Sesame Workshop and IDEO Toy Lab. It features some original video footage of the friendly monster, as well as an easy tilt-based game for little people. Continue reading »

Sesame Street’s Best Musical Guests

There’s no question that kids’ music about nine million times better than it was when I was a kid. Even when I was babysitting, Raffi (gag me) and such sugary sweet stuff was the order of the day. But we’ve got Dan Zanes, Elizabeth Mitchell, and even traditionally more grown-up oriented artists like Barenaked Ladies and They Might be Giants making music for kids.

And I credit Sesame Street. In its 40 years of kid’s TV awesomeness, they’ve had some amazing musical guests. And that continues to this day. I think seeing stuff like Stevie Wonder and Johnny Cash on our favorite TV show changed our perspective on what “kids’ music” actually is, and led to wanting, and getting, much better stuff for our own kids. And the musicians that watched it as kids were clearly also influenced and are including their own kids in their musical lives and taking our kids along for the ride.

The Houston Press marked Sesame Street’s 40th birthday this week by posting a list of Sesame Street’s top ten music guests ever. While I seriously disagree with some of them –Andrea Bocelli, really? Denyce Graves did a similar guest shot that was way better — any list that includes Feist doing a riff on “1-2-3-4″ with the Muppets can’t be all that bad (see it after the jump). Continue reading »

Big Bird Tells All

Big Bird’s been around for 40 years, but there’s still plenty to learn about our giant feathered friend.  For instance, did you know he’s actually a Giant Golden Condor?  (I didn’t.)

Over at the New York Times, Big Bird tells all in Q & A session with some of his biggest fans.  Here are the highlights:

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Happy 40th Birthday, Sesame Street!

Google has replaced their logo with a series of Sesame Street-inspired images in honor of the big birthday.

1969 was certainly a banner year.  Neil Armstrong touched down on the moon.  Woodstock took place in upstate New York.  The Beatles released Abbey Road.  The Boeing 747 is first placed into service.  The television shows The Brady Bunch and Monty Python’s Flying Circus debuted.  While those shows, for better or for worse (not necessarily in that order), eventually went off the air, another show that got its start in 1969 is still going strong: the venerable children’s show Sesame Street.

It would be difficult to be a part of American society and not be familiar with the show — everyone, it seems, knows Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and the ubiquitous Elmo.  The show was meant to depict the sort of world kids in the big city themselves lived in and the idea worked.  It worked so well that now, forty years later, the show is as popular as ever.  As of 2006, Sesame Street was the most watched children’s show in the world — there are 20 international independent versions and it is shown in over 120 countries.
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American Apparel Teams Up with Sesame Street

Now it’s not only American Apparel’s scantily clad models that evoke youth, but their designs as well. The clothing company has teamed up with Sesame Street to offer its customers a limited-edition run of Big Bird et al. t-shirts. They’ll be released this month to coincide with Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary. Continue reading »

First Lady Celebrates Sesame Street

Michelle Obama on Sesame Street

On November 10, 1969, a television show unlike any other debuted on PBS. Based on the idea that if you could hold the attention of children, you could educate them, the program introduced kids to a grouchy green creature who lived in a garbage can and an oversized yellow bird. That show, of course, was Sesame Street.  Forty years later, the program that forever changed children’s television is celebrating with a brand new look and a VIP quest. Continue reading »

Scary Japanese Sesame Street

Sometimes we learn more about ourselves through the lens of another culture. For instance, who knew that Bert is a razor-toothed, screaming, jaundiced man with a giant flap of skin dangling horrifyingly from his neck. And who knew Ernie was such a perv. The Japanese knew, that’s who.

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Video: Sesame Street Does Mad Men

As I’ve always said, the best way to reach kids is by framing the lesson through the malaise of post war America.

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5 Coolest Counting Music Videos EVER!

What’s the best way to learn? With a song of course. To help your baby, child or even yourself with that whole counting thing, here are the five coolest counting songs ever. Really. From super cool to painfully cute. Check ‘em out here. Continue reading »

Cookie Monster Makes Lunch out of Lifetime Achievment Award

My four-year-old — nearly two years after her love affair with Elmo first ended — has rediscovered Sesame Street.  So every morning, we curl up so that she can watch her favorite characters (currently Big Bird and Abby Cadabby) while I get enjoy my daily dose of nostalgia.

Sesame Street’s long legacy of entertaining and educating kids in a way that respects their young age without ever talking down to them earned them a special recognition earlier this week: the Lifetime Achievement Emmy.  Watch the cast accept their award with a montage of favorite moments and see Cookie monster devour the “delicious” award.

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