Rosita, the furry, turquoise Muppet, shared her recipe for mango salsa with military families during a virtual event Thursday, then cheered them on through the screen as they danced around to upbeat music with her.
Parents, babies, toddlers and preschoolers joined in remotely from Camp Pendleton, California, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina, for a USO Military Virtual Programming session to experience Sesame Workshop’s latest resources for military families.
“Healthy, Happy, Ready” resources are designed to help military families build habits together around nutrition, movement and emotional wellness.
Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind “Sesame Street,” has partnered with the Defense Department’s Office of Military Family and Community Policy for 19 years on resources for military families with young children. Through the beloved Muppets Rosita, Elmo, Grover and others, they communicate directly with young children in ways they can understand, as well as their parents. Over the years, Sesame Workshop has conducted research and consulted with military families and other experts in various fields to develop its resources.
The new digital resources, available online 24/7, focus on fun but easy ways to get the whole family involved in healthy habits.
Videos focus on preparing nutritious meals as a family, a guide for growing a kitchen garden and ideas for making physical activity a regular part of the day. In her discussion with military families Thursday, Rosita said dancing is her favorite way of moving because she can dance whether it’s sunny or stormy outside.
The resources offer healthy, easy, kid-pleasing recipes; articles featuring tips and strategies for meal planning; and turning regular activities into play and games, especially during transitions or other busy times in military life. Printable pages to videos’ themes are also available, offering suggestions for getting started.
During a question-and-answer portion at Thursday’s session, mothers at Camp Pendleton and Fort Bragg learned, for example, that the new resources address picky eaters and provide suggestions on ways to connect with other military families around healthy habits.
Sesame Workshop encourages families to share ideas, but they’re seeing that not only are adults sharing ideas with other adults, but kids are sharing with other kids, too, said Jeanette Betancourt, Sesame Workshop’s senior vice president of U.S. social impact.
In the past, Muppets have been featured in segments for military children dealing with deployments, homecomings, relocations, grief and other realities of military life. In a segment on military caregiving, Rosita, as a Muppet daughter of a Muppet military veteran, shared her feelings about adjusting to the family’s new life after her father’s injuries and how it helps to talk to Elmo about it. Those resources remain available on Sesame Workshop’s newly redesigned website, Betancourt said.
But more recently, they’ve heard directly from military families that they want to find easy ways to keep their children healthy that they can incorporate into their busy daily lives, Betancourt said.
During Thursday’s session, Rosita offered a tip for both children and adults on what to do when things get a little busy or stressful at home. It helps her to stop, take a deep breath and then let go.
“Sometimes I need two deep breaths,” she said.
After that, she said, “We hug.”
Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book “A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families.” She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.
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