SesameWorkshop.org
© 2004 Sesame Workshop
This site uses the characters and setting of Sesame Street to entertain while teaching. Content includes games, stories, music, art, mail, and Elmo's World. There are a variety of games that reinforce numbers, shapes, and letters all the while improving mouse skills. Some games are educational. For example, in Elmo's Classroom you can practice counting and read a story with Elmo. Some games are purely entertaining, such as with Snuffy's Magic Garden where simply by clicking a watering can lets you create an immediate garden. You control the amount of plants and the size. In the story corner, you can watch as a play-type scenario unfolds. For example in The Lemonade Stand, you help Elmo and Zoe make lemonade by counting out lemons, sugar, and water amounts. You also help sell the lemonade by counting coins. In mail you can help create a postcard from a far away destination. The site is quick to remind that they are a non-profit and is readily available for us to make a donation. A simple mouse click takes us to all the information we need. There is also a link to a Sesame store where toys, plush, music, movies and more are available. The link to commercial content is not glaring as in other sites and may even be easily missed by young site viewers. While the activities focus on age appropriate skills, they can go on bit long. The Lemonade Stand story went on much longer than you would expect to hold a young child's interest. In Elmo's classroom, clicking on an abacus made it count to ten, but the child only watched the counting and did not participate. All the characters are found on the site with a heavy emphasis on Elmo. The music was a nice feature that could be played in the background during another activity. For the age it is targeting, Sesame has created some nice activities.
Internet Site
Teaches: math, reading, letters, numberals, counting, sorting
CTR Rating: 88%