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Ready to Learn

WETA’s Ready to Learn initiative was created especially for families and child care providers to help them nurture a child’s natural curiosity and love of learning.

Ready to Learn combines television with community outreach and innovative education materials. This exciting blend of television services builds on the appeal and learning goals of PBS children’s programs that families know and trust, such as Sesame Street, Between the Lions, Cyberchase and Clifford.

Ready to Learn for the Washington area

Ready to Learn
WETA's Ready to Learn project has made quality children's television series the basis for outreach programs to the Washington community for more than a decade.

The initiative helps families, child-care providers and teachers learn how to use public television series to help young viewers learn to read.

WETA's Ready to Learn service offers:

  • More than 60 hours of quality educational and entertaining children's programming every week
  • Non-commercial, educational breaks on-air to help children become successful learners
  • Workshops for parents and families, child care providers, and teachers to help them use TV as an engaging literacy tool
  • PBS Families, a magazine published twice a year in English and Spanish with stories and ideas for activities
  • Free books for workshop participants and their families
  • The WETA Ready to Learn newsletter

Each year, WETA conducts more than 150 Ready to Learn workshops in English and Spanish, training more than 1,500 participants who collectively care for 11,000 children. WETA also distributes more than 1,500 children's books annually.

WETA's partners

  • Arlington Community Action Head Start
  • Montgomery County Public Libraries
  • United Planning Organization

A Ready to Learn workshop at Parklawn Family Center in Alexandria, Virginia.

Ready to Learn

A Ready to Learn workshop.

Other initiatives

Cookie Monster

Sesame Street Healthy Habits for Life

As Cookie Monster says, "Cookies are a sometimes food!" WETA's Ready to Learn project has begun a new initiative with Kaiser Permanente to provide Sesame Street Healthy Habits for Life workshops in the community.

WETA's Ready to Learn project is made possible through the generous support of Capital One, The Claude Moore Charitable Foundation, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation and the Wachovia Foundation.