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Take a look inside the constantly evolving curriculum and format for Sesame Street. There’s always something new to learn!

Year after year for over three decades, Sesame Street has maintained a mission to reach young children in powerful and responsible ways with a view that learning and fun are equally crucial elements of any young child’s education. Within a community of playful and curious Muppets and monsters as well as nurturing adults, Sesame Street fosters a love of learning. We know children are always ready to learn. The question is what are they learning?

Each episode of Sesame Street is backed by a curriculum, which is founded in years of research and continuous work with educational experts. Through this work with teachers, researchers, parents like you, and information gained from preschoolers themselves Sesame Street continues to evolve, growing with the needs of today’s children and their caregivers.

Many new and innovative segments highlight crucial areas of a whole child curriculum and bring, for example, literacy, math, and Spanish as well as social-emotional topics to life for young viewers.

Cookie Monster introduces viewers to the Letter of the Day and the show then features multiple segments that focus on literacy objectives such as letter sounds, rhyming, and storytelling. The Count brings us the Number of the Day and follow-up segments focus on crucial math concepts such as counting, number recognition, geometric shapes, measurement, and patterns. Rosita, our monster who comes from Mexico and is fluent in Spanish describes a Spanish Word of the Day and shows viewers what it means.

In addition, Sesame Street always addresses the social-emotional needs and developing abilities of preschoolers such as understanding and regulating emotions and developing a sense of empathy. During the street story at the beginning of every show our characters model strong thinking skills as they problem solve, cooperate, take turns, and explore how to work together and respect differing opinions. For example, in one episode, Rosita is embarrassed about her Spanish accent because she realizes that she doesn’t sound just like her friends. She decides not to talk at all! Her friends help her realize that her accent is part of what makes her special and interesting and part of why they love her. She wouldn’t be the same Rosita without it!

Your loveable, blue, and furry friend Grover is now in the spotlight with his very own section of Sesame Street. Each day Grover takes viewers on a journey to a new spot on the globe, thus giving him his new name, Global Grover! He introduces children in the U.S. to children all over the world who are also learning and growing; mastering new dances, making new things, and playing with friends and family. This section of the show evolved out of a desire to feature curriculum addressing global awareness, understanding of others, and an appreciation of both similarities and differences.

Following Global Grover, children see animations such as Global Thingy, which focuses on mutual respect and understanding and a series of animations featuring a young girl named Medlenka who lives in a diverse neighborhood and explores child relevant topics with her friends who live nearby.

In a segment entitled, "Journey to Ernie" Big Bird and Ernie play a game of hide-and-seek. In a newly developed Journey to Ernie, Ernie gives Big Bird a hint that he needs to look for ‘3’ and also to think about big, bigger, and biggest. Big Bird enters a snow-filled world and eventually figures out that Ernie is hiding inside a snowman. There are three big snow balls and one is big (the head), another is bigger (the belly), and another is biggest (at the bottom of the snowman). Journey to Ernie always highlights a variety of reasoning skills such as guessing from clues, matching, and pattern recognition among others.

The updated format, incorporated during Season 33, allows children to predict what comes next as they watch. This predictability allows viewers to develop a sense of mastery. At the same time, surprises and new characters such as Baby Bear’s new little sister, Curly Bear and a new character, Trash Gordon, who visits at the end of each show, keep young viewers engaged as they think actively about what they see during each Sesame Street episode.

With all of these changes as well as a continuously evolving curriculum, we continue our commitment to young children.

Check out the TV Schedule to see when this and other episodes air on your local PBS station.