Sesame Street on your iPod!

I feel really silly that I didn’t make this discovery sooner, especially with a 2 year old at home, but Sesame Street has its own podcast! That’s right, you can get Elmo, Big Bird, Murray and more on your iPod, for FREE! Each weekly podcast focuses on listening, reading comprehension, and vocabulary building and contains short clips from the show intermingled with special appearances from celebrities and of course, Muppets.

This week’s video happens to focus on the word “family”, so Murray (which I believe is a fairly new Muppet) does a little “Word on the Street” thing and interviews kids about their families before the podcast goes on to show a family expecting a new baby, Al Roker hamming it up with his family photos, and lots of Muppets. For those that may not be podcast savvy, or don’t own an iPod, the Sesame Street people have done a wonderful job of explaining what a podcast is, and how you can download the videos and watch them on your computer or any other mp3 player that can show video. It isn’t just limited to iPods, despite my misleading title. There are also handy links to subscribe to the podcast in both iTunes and other RSS readers.

This would be a fantastic way for early elementary and/or pre-school teachers to bring the visual immersion of Sesame Street into the hands (literally) of students. It could also serve as a great template for having older students (1st or 2nd grade) create their own podcasts or videos that focus on vocabulary. Either way, I can’t wait to start downloading these at home so I can bring them up the next time my little one wants to watch a movie on the computer, which she clearly demands whenever she sees me working on the laptop. And since the Sesame Street Workshop knows that lots of parents will probably use the podcasts, they have a terrific page with ideas about getting your kids talking about the podcasts, and extending the learning.