SESAME STREET Partners with Ms. Rachel for Back-to-School Songs
By Movieguide® Contributor
Elmo, Cookie Monster and Abby have partnered with popular children’s content creator Ms. Rachel to create three new songs as kids return to school.
The first song, “This is the Way We Go to School Song with Ms. Rachel and Elmo” helps kids learn all of the things they need to do before they head to school, such as getting dressed, eating breakfast and brushing their teeth. Two other school-centered songs are set to be released later this year.
The upcoming songs, along with the first song, are set to be released on the SESAME STREET YouTube channel along with Ms. Rachel’s personal account. In total, they will reach over 35 million subscribers.
Ms. Rachel started her channel in 2019 to help her son — a visual learner — learn through content that stimulates many senses. She draws on her background as a preschool teacher and has grown her brand extremely quickly in the five years since she first began. Last year, she generated over 400 million views in one month alone and has amassed over 7 billion views in total.
Along with SESAME STREET, she has also collaborated with The Wiggles and the toy company Spin Master.
SESAME STREET’s collaboration on YouTube highlights the brand’s eagerness to reach kids through new mediums other than its traditional TV timeslot. Earlier this year, it brought Elmo and friends to the Olympics to help kids who wanted to watch the event engage with the sports.
“The Olympics celebrates the best in sportsmanship and promotes kindness and respect, traits that are central to our mission to help children grow smarter, stronger, and kinder to build a better world,” said SESAME STREET chief marketing brand officer Samantha Maltin ahead of the event.
The show also redid its format last November as it looked to evolve to fit the times and better engage with the needs of today’s younger audience.
Movieguide® previously reported:
SESAME STREET is planning some big changes for its upcoming 56th season.
“With any change you have evolutions, and then you have things that are slightly bigger steps, while still staying core to who we are,” Steve Youngwood, the CEO of Sesame Workshop, told The Hollywood Reporter. “We felt like this was a moment to step back and think bigger about how we evolve it.”
The biggest change is to the episodes’ format. Instead of the familiar “magazine”-style structure, the episodes will be split into two larger sections, with a new, animated section in between.
“It’s going to give us an opportunity to dive further into the narrative,” Kay Wilson Stallings, the executive VP and chief creative development and production officer for Sesame Workshop, explained.
Stallings added that the “reimagining” of SESAME STREET’s format will mean the show can offer more “dynamic” and “sophisticated” stories.
