Destination for ‘Sesame Street’: the Moon

With apologies to Oscar Wilde: Worms may live their lives in the gutter, but some of them are looking at the stars . . . and one of them is going to the moon. His name is Slimey.

As it kicks off its 29th season today, “Sesame Street” launches its first major science curriculum for preschoolers. At its core: a lunar mission for Oscar the Grouch’s intrepid little pet worm Slimey that will span 19 weeks, the longest continuing story arc ever done on the series.

That plot, called “Slimey in Space,” doesn’t actually begin airing until Jan. 13, but in the meantime the much-honored PBS series will be dealing with other science themes, including the environment, the senses, body parts, light and shadow and taking a look at “What’s alive?” and “What’s inside?”

The hope is to encourage children’s reasoning skills, to feed their natural inclination to explore and make sense of the world around them and, especially, to give both boys and girls the sense that science is part of everyday life.

“We’ve always done science on ‘Sesame Street,’ ” said Rosemarie Truglio, director of “Sesame Street” research, “but we’ve revised our science curriculum to stress that science is all around us; it’s not confined to a laboratory. We’re not going to use words like ‘experiment’; you’re not going to see people in white lab coats.

“The goal has two parts: One is to increase preschoolers’ natural sense of curiosity. The other is to strengthen the connection between their exploration and cognitive skills: observations, asking questions, listening, predicting, planning and problem-solving.”

The shows will focus on multiple points of view, on how different perspectives can supply different answers. “For example, I may notice the shape of the leaves,” Truglio said, “you may notice the color.”

Slimey Worm’s story line is extended to make a point: It takes time to get to the moon.

“How do you convey time to young children?” Truglio said. “It’s very abstract. This is one way we can show them.”

A NASA advisor reviewed all the Slimey scripts. After all, play on this “Street” is serious business. Each season the writers are given a curriculum sheet containing new subjects to be incorporated as well as the elements that are part of every show--literacy, numbers, spatial concepts and diversity. Special themes in past years have included Maria and Luis’ marriage and subsequent parenthood and visits to the dentist and to the doctor.

The flip side of the sober academic guidelines, however, is the creative flights of fancy they inspire. Both Michael Loman, the show’s executive producer, and Lou Berger, its head writer, break up laughing when they talk about Slimey’s story line.

Because only Oscar can understand Slimey--the tiny, fuzzy Muppet can’t be heard by anyone else--”we’re going to set up a computer station at Oscar’s newsstand,” Loman said. “And there will be WASA [as opposed to NASA] worm scientists at that site. Slimey is going up with four international worms and a stowaway chicken.

“Nobody else sees this chicken,” Loman said, his chuckles building, “except the farmer whose chicken it is. He carries on that the chicken is on the spaceship, but nobody else sees it. They do find it strange that feathers keep appearing.”

It won’t be another “Alien,” however. This “stealth” chicken is convinced it’s a worm.

“Yes, the chicken did get on board, despite precautions by WASA security,” Berger said, “but no one gets eaten.”

The choice of Slimey for astronaut was not made lightly.

“Slimey is really fearless,” Berger said. “He’s gone to the worm Olympics, he’s been shot out of cannons in the worm circus. And he’s the smallest creature we’ve got. To have a little creature you can’t hear speak--except for Oscar--who can do all these wonderful things is great for kids to see. They like to see the character you might think has the least power put into these situations.

“The other thing about it is you don’t worry about Slimey. If you put another character in, like Elmo or Telly, they are such expressive characters that you have to deal with their concerns. Slimey doesn’t have any concerns. He’s like a little natural force. We think in a sense that he’s a metaphor for every kid’s curiosity.”

Putting Slimey in space enabled the writers to explore another situation faced by preschoolers--separation anxiety.

“He’s Oscar’s pet,” Berger said. “With all of Oscar’s grouchiness, this is somebody he truly cares about. There are some touching stories: Oscar saying goodbye before Slimey gets into the ship and the two of them exchanging pictures, Oscar for the first time not being there for Slimey’s birthday. So, on one level there’s this off-the-wall, slapstick adventure, but on the other hand there’s this really poignant story about Oscar waiting for his worm to come home.”

Thanks to NASA’s involvement with facts and language, even the writers learned a few things. “For instance,” Berger said, “we never say ‘blast-off,’ we say ‘liftoff.’ You don’t talk about going into outer space, you’re going into space. We also had to learn that up and down are meaningless in space.”

The brainstorming sessions with writers and Muppeteers did get rather hilarious at times, Berger said.

“We had great fun coming up with the tests to see which worms would go. One of the tests we came up with was putting about 40 worms on a Lazy Susan and spinning it very quickly. We figured that ‘stickability’ is very important in space if you’re a worm.

“And the spaceship had to have a bowling alley,” he said, “because these worms like to bowl.”

The writers also had to come up with experiments that Slimey and his crew will conduct in space, such as forming letters of the alphabet in weightlessness.

The point is to show that “we’re always doing science,” Berger said. “It’s asking questions, being curious. We just don’t usually call that science. So by the time kids get an introduction to it in school, science seems intimidating and hard when, in fact, any time you ask a question and try something based on that question, you’re doing science.

“If, when this whole journey is over, a kid walks outside and looks up at the moon and wants to learn more about it, we’ve succeeded.”

*

New installments of “Sesame Street” air weekdays at 10 a.m. with a repeat the following day at 6 a.m. on KCET-TV Channel 28.