They found that children who watched Sesame Street were more likely to be academically on track, and less likely to be held back, than those who didn’t. “Just the act of being exposed to the show and watching it routinely increased school performance among the children who were able to view it,” says Phillip Levine, an economist at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, citing the results of a study he and Melissa Kearney at the University of Maryland published.
#SPONGEBOB JUMPING LINE DRAWING TV#
UHF signals were weaker, and some TV sets couldn’t receive them, which meant only around two-thirds of Americans had access to Sesame Street. Has it succeeded? By the late 1960s, most US households owned a television set, but whether they could watch Sesame Street depended on where they lived, because in some areas it was broadcast on Very High Frequency (VHF) channels, in others on Ultra High Frequency (UHF) channels. “The Sesame mission is to help children grow smarter, stronger and kinder,” says Rosemarie Truglio, a developmental psychologist who is senior vice president of curriculum and content at Sesame Workshop. And although it was entertaining, every episode was – and still is – planned with specific learning objectives in mind. Co-creator Joan Ganz Cooney thought television might be used as an educational tool to better prepare kids for kindergarten.īy January 1970, just a few months after it first aired, roughly a third of two-to-five-year-olds in the US regularly watched the show, with upwards of five million children tuning in to each episode. Such direct collaborations between academics and children’s TV are not new. Sesame Street, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2019, employed developmental psychologists and education experts as part of the production team from the outset. Moon and Me, it turns out, is a product of research, informed by a collaboration between the co-creator of the hit show Teletubbies – Andrew Davenport – and Dylan Yamada-Rice, a researcher specialising in children’s education and storytelling, to study how children interact with toy houses. And it could also help us parents to make better decisions about the type of television we let our children watch. A better understanding of these differences could help create healthier, more engaging television programmes, boosting children’s understanding of the world as well as keeping them entertained. Young children’s minds process information differently from adults’ – what’s weird for us is often highly engaging for them. The fact that I don’t understand these shows hasn’t helped.īut weirdness, it turns out, can be a good thing. What is it about these pre-school TV shows that makes them so captivating for young viewers, but so strange to adult eyes? As a mother, I’ve worried whether watching television at a young age is a healthy childhood experience or a mind-rotting activity stunting my children’s development. My eight-year-old daughter stares in slack-jawed wonder at it all. As the episode we’re watching unfolds, he moves closer and closer to the screen, smiling, cooing, pointing and saying “Wow”. My 1.5-year-old nephew doesn’t share this scepticism. Why the way we talk to children matters.It follows the night-time exploits of a mismatched set of dolls – including Pepi Nana, a soft pink onion called Mr Onion, and the milky, clown-like Colly Wobble – who come to life whenever the Moon shines. Right now, for many parents, that show is Moon and Me. If you’re a parent, there’s also probably a show that your children adore but you find strange, or even a bit creepy. Most people have a favourite TV show from childhood. He reads her letter, pulls up the hood of his dressing-gown, and flies out of his crater towards Earth… What Pepi Nana doesn’t know is that on the Moon lives a waxy-looking creature with coal-black eyes called Moon Baby. She steps onto the balcony of her toy house, kisses the letter and watches it flutter up into the night sky. Yours lovingly, out of the window, Pepi Nana.” “Tiddle toddle, please come to tea, and we can have a story. She walks over to the desk, sits down, and, using the oversized pencil in her front pocket, scribbles a letter to the Moon. “Tiddle toddle, tiddle toddle,” she says, flapping her arms, and blinking a pair of enormous round eyes.
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