Navigating Real Life Moments
Helping children understand everyday experiences through familiar routines, emotions, and situations.
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Modeling Positive Relationships
Showing children how people communicate, express emotions, solve problems, and build connections.
Promoting Learning Through Play
Encouraging curiosity, imagination, experimentation, and active participation.
Telling Authentically Inclusive Stories
Representing identities, cultures, families, and experiences with depth and care.
The Four Learning Principles
Both Moonbug’s publication of the principles and CSS’s companion publication outline how the principles are being integrated into Moonbug’s creative process through collaboration with learning consultants embedded throughout development and production. The materials also include supporting research and citations.
The collaboration brings child development expertise directly into the creative process behind Moonbug’s flagship series, including CoComelon, Blippi, Little Angel, and their spin-off series like CoComelon’s The Melon Patch. The work helps guide how stories are developed from early concepts through production.
At the center of the partnership are four core learning principles developed by CSS in partnership with academic scholars and Moonbug’s creative team. These principles are designed to help guide Moonbug’s preschool storytelling and give parents greater visibility into how learning is considered throughout the creative process.
What the Research Shows
From Research to Your Living Room
Learning consultants have supported CoComelon’s creative process for years. The collaboration with CSS formalizes and expands that work through a shared set of principles grounded in child development research.
Learning consultants work directly alongside CoComelon's creative team from the start of every new season, helping define the learning and developmental goals each set of episodes will address and reviewing scripts and early cuts to make sure the learning intentions are clear, age-appropriate, and genuinely useful for young viewers.
The collaboration reflects a long-standing approach in children’s media where developmental research helps inform storytelling decisions for young audiences.
CSS is led by Dr. Yalda T. Uhls, PhD, a research scientist at UCLA and a former senior film executive who has spent her career studying how media shapes children's development. Her team brings together psychologists, educators, and entertainment professionals to translate academic research into practical guidance for storytellers.
Together, Moonbug and CSS developed a shared set of research-backed learning principles that now help guide conversations throughout CoComelon’s creative development and production process.
CoComelon and UCLA's Center for Scholars & Storytellers
We've always believed that the best children's content starts with how children learn, not just what entertains them. Over the years, Moonbug’s creative teams have worked with trusted learning consultants on a show-by-show basis to help shape stories, routines, music, and emotional moments for preschool audiences. The partnership with CSS builds on that foundation by creating a more unified and research-informed approach across Moonbug’s preschool franchises. That belief is now grounded in a formal research partnership with the Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) at UCLA, one of the only organizations in the country dedicated entirely to bridging the gap between child development science and media creation.
The Experts Behind the Episodes
Several credentialed child development specialists contribute to the CoComelon production process:
Dr. Natascha Crandall
Dr. Natascha Crandall works directly with the CoComelon creative team to ensure each season's content aligns with current early childhood development research.
Dr. Yalda T. Uhls
Dr. Yalda T. Uhls (Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA) led the development of the overarching learning principles now applied across Moonbug's programming, including CoComelon, Blippi, and Little Angel.
What Rich Hickey, Moonbug's Chief Creative Officer, Says
"To make great stories for young kids, you have to start with how they learn. Our teams already spend a lot of time thinking about how toddlers experience music, stories, play, and routines. These principles are helping shape conversations throughout our development and production process every day and giving us a more transparent way to share how learning is considered throughout our creative work."
Rich Hickey, Chief Creative Officer, Moonbug Entertainment
How This Partnership Matters to You
Child development research has long shown that children benefit most from media when it is designed with clear learning goals and when a caring adult engages with them around what they watch. The UCLA partnership is Moonbug's commitment to holding up its side of that equation consistently, across every show it produces.
For parents and caregivers, the practical takeaways are straightforward:
What you can trust
CoComelon episodes are shaped by developmental specialists who set learning goals before a single line is written. Academic experts review content at multiple stages of production to ensure what your child sees is appropriate, supportive, and genuinely useful for where they are developmentally.
What you can do
Co-viewing, even briefly, dramatically increases what children take away from any program. Pausing to ask a simple question about what JJ just did, or connecting a song to something that happened in your day, turns screen time into a shared learning experience. Our Parents' Guide offers research-backed suggestions for making that easy.
A Note From Dr. Yalda T. Uhls
"As more preschoolers spend time on digital platforms, parents and creators are asking more urgent questions about what quality screen time actually means. Research shows children can learn from content, but only when it's designed with how they develop in mind. Our work with Moonbug is about bringing research and storytelling closer together."
Dr. Yalda T. Uhls, Founder and CEO, Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA
Questions Families Ask
1
What is the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA?
Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) is a nonprofit research organization based at UCLA that works to close the gap between academic child development science and the media industry. Founded by Dr. Yalda T. Uhls, it brings together researchers, psychologists, and entertainment professionals to help storytellers create content that genuinely supports the well-being of children and young people. CSS has collaborated with organizations including Disney, Paramount, Pixar, YouTube, and the U.S. Surgeon General's office. Visit CSS at UCLA
2
How does this partnership change what CoComelon produces?
Moonbug’s creative teams have long worked with trusted learning consultants to better understand how young children develop and how storytelling can support early learning. The partnership with CSS builds on that work by creating a more unified and research-informed approach across Moonbug’s preschool franchises.
3
Does this mean CoComelon is replacing entertainment with education?
Not at all. The goal has always been content that children genuinely want to watch, because engagement is what makes learning possible. The CSS framework helps ensure that the entertainment value and the developmental value work in the same direction. Songs are still catchy, characters are still lovable, and stories are still fun, but the choices behind them are grounded in what the developmental research says about how young children grow.
4
Where can I learn more about how to use CoComelon intentionally with my child?
Our Parents' Guide, developed with input from Dr. Elly Pueschel and Dr. Yalda T. Uhls, offers practical, research-backed strategies for getting the most developmental value from the time your child spends with CoComelon content.
Songs Built on Science. Stories Built for Your Child.
Choices inside a CoComelon episode, from the melody, the characters, to the everyday scenario at the center of the story, reflect decades of child development research and the work of specialists who think carefully about how young children experience the world. The collaboration with the Center for Scholars & Storytellers (CSS) at UCLA formalizes and deepens that commitment as research and children’s media continue to evolve.
Your child deserves content that was made with them in mind. That is the only standard we hold ourselves to.
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