Sesame Street’s Tips for Families at Home — Drawing, Cooking, and Moving Together
Week #3 — April 6, 2020
Rosemarie Truglio, PhD. Senior Vice President, Curriculum & Content, Sesame Workshop.
Everyone is adjusting to a new routine these days — and Sesame Workshop is here to support families as we collectively navigate our “for now” normal. This week, we bring you three “Play & Learn” activities to help children express their emotions through art and books, add playful learning to mealtime, and move their bodies to the music. And, after families watch Sesame Street and Esme & Roy segments on PBS Kids and HBO, we have some related “Watch and Learn” activities to help extend the learning beyond the screen.
Play & Learn Activities
Draw & Tell (Help Children Manage Emotions)
Children are experiencing a wide range of emotions right now, and it’s good to be able to express them in a healthy way. Drawing is a creative outlet everyone can enjoy!
Reassuring Your Budding Artist
- Encourage your child to draw “how they feel,” and use the pictures to talk about all the feelings — big and small — they’re having. Using “feelings words” like scared or worried helps build an emotions vocabulary and gives children a label for what they’re feeling: an important first step in managing a big emotion.
Let the Pictures Tell a Story
- Ask your child to tell you what to write on each picture — then, together, you can bind the pages and add the book to their personal library. This fun activity is packed with learning potential: it helps to develop literacy and fine motor skills and an appreciation for making art.
- Watch Rosita do it! When she was disappointed that she couldn’t find a book featuring a Latina girl, Rosita wrote her own book — maybe her story will inspire your child to become an author, too!
Reading Together
- Books like Elmo’s Emojis: A Book of Faces and Feelings are great way to start conversations about emotions. [Editor’s note: This book and 100+ other Sesame Street ebook titles are free for families right now — find them wherever e-books are sold: Apple, Barnes and Noble, Google, Kobo]
Ready, Set, Meal Time! (Add Playful Learning to Daily Routines)
Children love to help — and giving them tasks they can do to be helpers empowers them and boosts their self-confidence as they’re getting used to so many new routines. Meals are a good time to bring playful learning into everyday moments.
Setting the Table for Success
- Laying out individual places for meals or snacks helps develop math and literacy skills. Ask your child to count how many people will be sitting at the table. Then have her get out the same number of plates, spoons, cups, and so on — one for each person. Challenge: try handing your child three spoons, and then ask, “Do you need more spoons?”
- Offer a model for your child to follow: you can establish patterns by laying at least two place settings (fork on the left, plate in the middle, spoon on the right, etc.), then have your child repeat the pattern at each remaining place.
- Ask, “What is different? What is the same?” Together, you can compare spoons (serving spoon to a soup spoon to a teaspoon), plates (serving platters, dinner plates, dessert plates), glasses (sizes, shapes), or any other serving items.
Time to Eat — and Use Your Senses
Check out Cookie Monster’s new “Snack Chat” video. While getting ready for his favorite Sometimes Snack, Cookie Monster uses his senses in appreciation and anticipation of eating that scrumptious Chocolate Chippy COOKIE! Kids learn science skills as they:
- see the different colors and shapes of foods
- smell distinct aromas
- touch different textures when picking up finger foods
- taste a variety of flavors
Talk together about what your child is observing and experiencing — as you do, they’re building their vocabulary and language skills. This is also a chance to talk about how the foods we eat give us energy to play and learn, how they help to keep us healthy, and that there are all kinds of delicious Anytime Foods like fruits and vegetables — while foods like ice cream or Cookie Monster’s cookies are Sometimes Foods.
Move & Groove (Make Time for Healthy Exercise)
Singing and moving to your child’s favorite songs is a great way to turn frowns, frustration, and fussiness into smiles and laughter — all while getting some much-needed indoor exercise! Here’s our friend Elmo singing one of his favorite tunes — why not sing and dance along?
Add to the fun with homemade musical instruments — a simple craft activity that can make your musical movement even more enjoyable.
Make Your Own Instruments
Common household objects can make the most wonderful musical instruments: an empty tissue box and a few rubber bands turns into a guitar; empty oatmeal tubs, plastic containers, and sand pails become drums with wooden-spoon drumsticks. Try some the other ideas below, and put on a family concert:
- Wind instruments — A long cardboard tube from a roll of wrapping paper can turn into a pretend clarinet.
- Jingle bells — Pipe cleaners woven through the loops of holiday jingle bells can be shaped into bracelet-sized circles to shake.
- Shakers — Plastic bottles with caps can become shakers. Wash them well, peel off any labels, and fill them with small toys or crayons.
Watch & Learn Activities
Here are some easy ways to extend the learning after viewing episodes of Sesame Street and Esme & Roy with your child.
1.) In Sesame Street: Picture This, Alan gives Elmo, Rosita, and Abby his old cameras to play with and suggests that they can be photographers for the day. So Abby, Rosita, and Elmo go around Sesame Street taking pictures of things like sports and fashion, while learning how to use their cameras at the same time.
Extend the learning!
- You and your child can be photographers, too. Take pictures of things around your home or in your backyard. They might be pictures of each other, favorite toys, plants and flowers, the family pet — anything you like! Notice and talk about how lighting from the sun or within a room as well the way you hold the camera affects the way your pictures come out. Have fun!
- Children love looking at family pictures. Take this time to reflect on fond memories and talk about what new family memories you can make together, both during this “for now” normal and in the future, when we all transition to our “new” normal routines.
2.) In Sesame Street: Elmo and Rosita’s Musical Playdate, everyone is singing on Sesame Street! Elmo and Rosita are supposed to have a playdate, but they can’t find each other, which makes them both feel sad. They both start singing and by the time they reach the end of their songs, they find each other. Now they can play together!
Extend the learning!
- Play Elmo’s Got the Moves to inspire your child to get up and sing and move her body — why not invite the whole family to join in? Take turns substituting family names for “Elmo” (“Mommy’s got the moves!”). As your child sings along, encourage her to come up with her own dance moves — try wiggles, twists, hops, jumps, and perhaps some shimmies. Children can even include favorite dolls or other lovies to “sing and move” together!
- For a calmer activity as you wind down the day, you can sing together about all the things you did, maybe dedicating one verse to everything you are thankful for!
3.) In Esme & Roy: Ooga, Party of Six, Hugo and Fig want to help make a special dinner for Mommy and Daddy, but they’re not big enough to cook. Esme and Roy realize that Hugo and Fig can pretend to be the host and server at their own restaurant to help make dinner special.
Extend the learning! Plan a “special” family dinner with your child. Together, decide on the foods and drinks you will serve, then make the menu. Your child can dictate the words for you to write (older children can write by themselves) then decorate the border of your homemade menu. Talk about all the ingredients you’ll need — if you have to go to the store, your child can help make the shopping list. Set the table together and, maybe for this special meal, wear “fancy” clothes as if you were going to a restaurant to celebrate a special family milestone.
4.) In Esme & Roy: How Hugo Got His Toots Back, Hugo needed to rest his nose tooter to use in the Noisy Parade, but he couldn’t stop tooting, and he lost his toot. To help, Esme, Roy and Hugo make musical instruments for Hugo to use so he can make noise during the parade.
Extend the learning! Make a Homemade Kazoo and put on a Family Parade.
- Place a small piece of wax paper over one end of a toilet paper roll. Fasten it down with a rubber band.
- Then, poke some holes in the wax paper.
- Place your mouth directly over the other end and hum and/or sing into the kazoo.
As you toot around the home, pretend to be clowns in a parade and make up silly moves by hopping, twisting, bending forwards and backwards, moving an arm up and down — whatever you choose, to get loose and have fun!
These are stressful days for families everywhere, and Sesame Workshop is here to help. With 50 years’ experience in early childhood education and in helping children and their caregivers face challenging times, we’ve created an online hub of resources that parents can use at home to spark playful learning, offer children comfort, and focus a bit on self-care, too. Each week, as we roll out new content, a Sesame Workshop early childhood development expert will contribute a column here with strategies to help families find ways to breathe, laugh, and play together.
