Learn to Read Between the Lions

Between the Lions is a show formatted in the tradition of Sesame Street; however, the target audience is a little older. Between the Lions picks up where Sesame Street leaves off. While Sesame Street concentrates on letters and numbers, Between the Lions focuses on learning to read.

Between the Lions, centers around a pride of lions who inhabit a library and share a love of reading. Each episode contains a variety of cartoons, skits, and songs performed by puppets and animated characters. Theo, Cleo, Lionel, Leona, Arty Smartypants, Martha Reader, Cliff Hanger, et al. each use their methods to make reading simple for youngsters. Celebrities such as Bruno Kirby and Elmo often drop in for guest appearances.

The weakness of Between the Lions is that the show reruns episodes with tremendous frequency; however, the episodes are of great quality and make reading easy and fun.

Sesame Beginnings DVDs for Babies and Toddlers

The makers of Sesame Street have gone into direct competition with Disney’s Baby Einstein line. Sesame Beginnings is Sesame Workshop’s new line for children six months to two years of age.

Several Sesame Beginnings books and toys are currently available; however, the Sesame Beginnings DVDs are bound to get the most attention. The new DVDs are intended to be viewed by parents with their children and are supposed to promote parent-child interaction through creative play.

The cast of the Sesame Beginnings videos features younger versions of Sesame Street favorites and their adult relatives. The major characters of the cast are Baby Elmo, Elmo’s dad, Baby Cookie Monster, Cookie Monster’s grandma, Baby Big Bird, Nani Bird, Prairie Dawn, and Prairie Dawn’s mom.

As of today, only two titles are available on DVD: Beginning Together and Make Music Together; however, more titles are expected to follow.

Plaza Sesamo: The Fun Way to Learn Basic Spanish

Plaza Sesamo, the Spanish Sesame Street, is not only for Spanish-speakers but also for those who want a fun and easy introduction to conversational Spanish. If you want to introduce your child to the sounds and intonations of Spanish, Plaza Sesamo is a great place to start.

Plaza Sesamo’s audience is primarily composed of preschoolers who speak only rudimentary Spanish. To keep things easy to understand, the vocabulary on Plaza Sesamo is very basic, and the sentences are very short and simple. Also, like virtually all children’s programming, the communication is highly expressive and includes an abundance of visual aids. The result is a constant flow of Spanish communication that could not be any easier to understand.

Watching Plaza Sesamo will not magically give your child the ability to speak fluent Spanish, but the show will definitely give the child a taste of the language that could serve as a stepping stone when beginning formal Spanish training in the future.

Plaza Sesamo: The Latino Sesame Street

Plaza Sesamo, Sesame Street’s Latino counterpart, premiered in Mexico and Latin America in 1972. Since its debut, Plaza Sesamo has thrilled millions of Spanish-speaking children.

Abelardo, Big Bird’s Latino cousin, is a giant green, red, pink, and yellow parrot. Much like Big Bird, Abelardo serves as the centerpiece of the show. Each episode, Abelardo and his friends, Lola, Pancho Contreras, Elefancio, etc. lead groups of children in peppy dances and songs as they explore the alphabet, numbers, etc. (All of this is in Spanish, of course.)

Just like Sesame Street, Plaza Sesamo incorporates animation clips and video segments. The show maintains an energetic and exciting pace to keep the attention of its easily distracted preschool audience.

You can find Plaza Sesamo on most major Spanish television stations.

Sesame Street Is the Fast Lane of Education

Sesame Street is the single most important show on television. Seasame Street first aired on November 10, 1969. Over the decades, the producers of the show have fine-tuned the process of education through entertainment and have made Sesame Street the standard in children’s educational entertainment.

The key to Sesame Street’s effectiveness is the show’s energetic format. Sesame Street takes the essence of early learning (colors, shapes, numbers, letters, etc.) and integrates them into fun, interesting, and quick segments. For example, Big Bird and Ernie may discuss the letter D, and then Ernie will flashback to a song he sang to Bert about the letter D. Elmo may tell Cookie Monster that his favorite number is 5, and then a quick music video about the number 5 will play. Many of these segments last just a few minutes (often less than a minute); however, the producers have managed to weave the segments together to create one seamless episode after another.

Parents who watch Sesame Street with their children on a regular basis will recognize many of the songs and skits that appear throughout almost every episode. Sesame Street has amassed such a tremendous library of material that the producers can pull from dozens of classic segments for almost any subject. Even though some of these segments go back decades, they still manage to be relevant. The reason why they are relevant is because the basics of learning have not changed, and young children today are a lot like young children were decades ago.

In the world of media, there are hundreds of examples of important programming; however, not one of them does as much to introduce small children to learning as Sesame Street. There is no more valuable hour of programming on television.