Wyoming PBS's Ready to Learn initiative will
contribute toward one of our state's most urgent educational
goals: ensuring that our children begin school ready
to learn.
The core of Ready to Learn is providing non-violent, commercial-free,
educational children's television programming seven hours
per day to Wyoming households. This daily broadcast includes
some of the most popular, award-winning and engaging programming
available today: Arthur, Dragon Tales, Clifford, Between
the Lions, Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street. Ready
to Learn also provides extensive outreach services to parents,
childcare providers and other early childhood professionals,
free of charge.
How Ready to Learn "extends the reach"
of PBS children's programs:
"Ready to Learn" initiatives extend learning
beyond the TV screen -- through books, websites, extra materials
and activities.
Nationally 875,000 parents and early childhood professionals
have participated in over 21,000 community-based "Ready
to Learn" workshops on using television wisely and
preparing children to read. Ready to Learn coordinators
across the country have distributed 2.5 million new books
to children.
In Wyoming, "Ready to Learn" is just beginning,
but the mission is the same -- to work with parents and
childhood professionals to distribute books and provide
training so that Wyoming children can be better prepared
to enter school.
How can PBS children's shows help children
learn?
Research shows that teens who have watched Sesame Street
as children had better grades in school, read more books,
had higher leves of achievement and expressed less aggressive
attitudes than those who watched rarely or not at all.
Recent studies have also shown that the PBS series Dragon
Tales responds directly to helping children be more
resilient to change, modeling the value of persisting at
a task, helping kids to more goal-oriented and more likely
to pursue challenging experiences.
Arthur and Reading Rainbow encourage children
to read -- by recommending good books for kids, and showing
children the fun of storytelling.
Zooboomafu teaches children about animals and our
natural world; again, studies show that kids who like and
care about animals grow up to be caring, loving adults.
