WGBH is undertaking a planning phase to develop "PEEP and the Big, Wide World," a daily, half-hour series for the preschool and kindergarten public television audience. The series will use the explorations and adventures of a newly-hatched chick and his animal friends as the foundation for an initiative in early childhood science and math education. The goal of the project is to introduce science and math to a broad, diverse audience of children in an exciting and developmentally appropriate way. During this planning phase, the project will:
1) Bring the Science Content Director on board to work with the production staff and advisors;
2) Develop the series curriculum;
3) Create a series "bible" where principal characters, visual design, approach to science and math, and sample story ideas are sketched out;
4) Write two story treatments for the series; and
5) Conduct preliminary testing of PEEP with the target audience.
The Principal Investigator for the project will be Kate Taylor, Director of Children's Programming at WGBH. Karen Worth, Senior Scientist at EDC, will serve as Content Director. For production of the series, WGBH will team with Derek Lamb, former Executive Director of Animation at the National Film Board of Canada, and Kaj Pindal, former Head of Animation at Danish Television.
