As a parent, it's not always easy to find activities that are both exciting for kids and truly educational.
I know the struggle all too well.
We recently tried Cocomelon Sing and Play with JJ on our smart TV and the change in our kids was immediate.
Instead of just watching, they were jumping up laughing, singing and clapping, along with JJ and the whole crew.
Thanks to the impressive technology, the characters actually reacted to our kids' voices and movements, making the whole thing more like playtime than watching a program.
Created with guidance from early childhood specialists Cocomelon, Sing and Play with JJ helps support vocabulary development, rhythm coordination and confidence.
The experience is safe, ad-free, and totally hands-free on the big screen.
Our kids loved feeling like part of the adventure and we loved watching them light up as they learned through upbeat music and playful movement.
So if you want screen time that feels like playtime you can feel good about, give it a try.
Available now in the Volley app on your smart TV.
Just search Volley in your TV's app store and start your free trial of Cocomelon.
Sing and Play with JJ today.
It's a cold December evening.
You're sitting in a grand theater surrounded by excited children and their families.
The lights dim.
The orchestra starts playing beautiful, magical music.
On stage you see a Christmas party come to life, with dancing children, a mysterious godfather bringing gifts and a wooden nutcracker doll.
Suddenly, the nutcracker transforms into a prince and you're swept away to the land of sweets, where everything is magical.
This is the Nutcracker Ballet, and it's one of the most beloved Christmas traditions in the world.
But did you know that when it first premiered more than 130 years ago, people didn't like it?
Let's discover the amazing story of the Nutcracker and the brilliant composer who created it, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in a small town in Russia.
From the time he was very young, Tchaikovsky loved music.
When he was just five years old, he started taking piano lessons.
He could pick out songs on the piano almost instantly after hearing them.
Music came naturally to him, but Tchaikovsky's parents wanted him to have a more practical job.
In Russia at that time, being a musician wasn't seen as a good career.
So when Tchaikovsky was 10 years old, his parents sent him to boarding school to study law.
After graduating, he worked for the government for four years.
But he was miserable.
He couldn't stop thinking about music.
When Tchaikovsky was 21 years old, he made a brave decision.
He quit his government job and enrolled in music school to study composition.
His family thought he was making a huge mistake.
But Tchaikovsky knew what he wanted.
He studied hard and graduated in 1865.
Soon after, he became a professor, teaching music to other students.
Tchaikovsky started composing all kinds of music, but he's most famous for his three ballets.
His first ballet was Swan Lake, which he finished in 1876.
When it first premiered in 1877, critics didn't like it.
They thought it was too complicated.
But today, Swan Lake is one of the most popular ballets ever created.
Tchaikovsky's life wasn't always easy.
His mother died when he was just 14 years old, which deeply affected him.
But something wonderful happened to help him.
A wealthy woman named Nadezhda Vonmec heard his music and loved it.
She offered to give him money every year so he could quit teaching and focus only on composing.
There was one strange rule.
They could never meet in person.
For 13 years they wrote letters to each other but never met face to face.
This let Tchaikovsky compose his greatest works.
In 1889, Tchaikovsky composed his second ballet, The Sleeping Beauty.
This one was based on the fairy tale about a princess who falls into a deep sleep.
When it premiered in 1890, the public loved it.
The Sleeping Beauty became a hit.
After that success, the director of Moscow's Imperial Theaters asked Tchaikovsky to create another ballet.
This one would be based on a story called The Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
Tchaikovsky wasn't very excited about this project.
He thought the story was boring and too childish.
Still, he worked hard on the music.
While composing The Nutcracker in 1891, Tchaikovsky traveled to Paris, France.
There he discovered something amazing, a brand new musical instrument called the celesta.
The celesta makes a magical bell-like sound.
Tchaikovsky immediately knew this was perfect for his Sugar Plum Fairy dance.
He had the celesta secretly brought to Russia.
That twinkling sound you hear in Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy is the celesta and it's become one of the most famous sounds in classical music.
Before the full ballet premiered, Tchaikovsky selected eight pieces from the ballet and performed them as a concert on March 19 1892.
The audience loved it!
Almost every piece got so much applause that the musicians had to play them again.
But when the full ballet premiered on December 18, 1892, at the Mariinsky Theater in St.
Petersburg, things didn't go as well.
Critics complained that the story was boring.
They didn't like that so many children were on stage.
One critic even called it unbearable.
Even Tchaikovsky himself wasn't happy with it.
But here's the amazing part.
Even though The Nutcracker wasn't a hit at first, the music was too beautiful to ignore.
People kept listening to it.
Slowly, more and more people fell in love with Tchaikovsky's melodies.
Sadly, Tchaikovsky died less than a year after The Nutcracker premiered.
He passed away on November 6, 1893, at the age of 53.
He never got to see how incredibly popular his ballet would become.
The Nutcracker didn't become a Christmas tradition right away.
It took decades.
The first performance outside Russia was in England in 1934.
Then in 1944, the San Francisco Ballet performed the first full-length version in the United States on Christmas Eve.
They only had $1000 to spend.
The real turning point came in 1954, when George Balanchine created a new version for the New York City Ballet.
Balanchine had actually danced in the Nutcracker as a teenager in Russia, so the ballet was special to him.
His version became hugely popular.
When it was shown on television in the late 1950s, millions of Americans saw it.
By the 1960s, the Nutcracker had become as much a part of Christmas as candy canes and Christmas trees.
Today, The Nutcracker is performed by ballet companies all over America during December.
Millions of people see it every year.
For many children, it's their first time watching ballet and hearing classical music.
The story of The Nutcracker and Tchaikovsky teaches us something important.
Sometimes great art isn't loved right away.
Tchaikovsky died thinking the Nutcracker was a failure.
He never imagined that, more than 130 years later, families all over the world would gather in theaters every December to watch his ballet and listen to his beautiful music.
He never knew that little girls would dream of dancing as the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Tchaikovsky also shows us that following your dreams is worth it.
He gave up a safe, boring job to study music, even though his family didn't approve.
He worked hard and created some of the most beautiful melodies ever written.
His three ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker are still performed all around the world.
So this December, if you get a chance to see The Nutcracker, pay attention to the music.
Listen to the magical Calesta in the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
Enjoy the beautiful melodies of the waltz of the flowers.
Remember that you're listening to music created by a composer who followed his heart even when times were tough.
And remember that this ballet, which seemed like a failure at first, became one of the most beloved Christmas traditions in the world.
That's the magic of the Nutcracker, and that's the lasting gift of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
