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HomeSomething Special
Something Special has won the Special International Jury's Prize (for Animation or TV) at the 18th Cairo International Film Festival for Children, "for its unique, successful approach to a program that stimulates the development of disabled children in a child friendly way"
Festival website (link opens in new window)The award-winning BBC TV series Something Special uses Makaton symbols and signs, as well as rhymes and songs, to help encourage communication and develop language in a fun and exciting way.
The series, which has been awarded two Royal Television Society Educational TV Awards, covers the six areas of learning for the Foundation Stage curriculum for 3-11 year olds.
These superbly presented programmes are aimed at early years and pre-school children to help them to understand others and to make themselves understood using signing and symbols.
The simple, interactive, and repetitive format encourages children to join in with a variety of activities, songs, dance, role play and games, and the colourful and wacky Mr Tumble provides an engaging and fun dimension.
TV showings
Something Special is currently being shown at 7.45am and 1.45pm on CBeebies, every Saturday and Sunday.
Resources
A wide range of Something Special DVDs, videos, and pocket books are available.
Online shop: Something Special
RTS Awards
Something Special has won the Royal Television Society award for Best Early Years programme - for the second year in a row. This is the only time that a programme has won it twice.
The most recent award was for the episode The Garden. The previous award was for "The Farm".
“The winning programme was warm and engaging. It fulfilled its educational goals and was superbly presented. The jury wished to commend it for portraying children with learning and communication difficulties as heroes.”
