There's a lot to celebrate on Sesame Street this month. For 40 years the show has been offering preschoolers fun-filled and educational shows that have set the standard for educational programming for children. The beloved characters are still as popular today as they have ever been, and that is quite something. To commemorate the 40-year milestone, a new DVD is available today: Sesame Street: 40 Years of Sunny Days (Compare Prices). The DVD features memorable moments on Sesame Street from the past 40 years, featuring stories, songs, Muppets and celebrity segments, and more. The collectible set also includes never-before-seen archival footage and a limited-edition hard covered commemorative book. Happy Birthday Sesame Street!

• 40 Years of Sunny Days Coloring Page

(Photo © Sesame Workshop)

A thrilling Jim Carrey fest in magical 3D, Disney's A Christmas Carol is a fantastic movie with a few flaws here and there. But what parents need to know, is that the movie contains scenes that could be extremely frightening for young children. The fact that the movie is not for 2-5 year-olds is fine. The story was not written for preschoolers, and families with kids ages 8 and up will probably thoroughly enjoy it (it all depends on kids' level of tolerance for scary ghost scenes). If you want to know more about the movie before taking the kiddos, check out a review for parents of Disney's A Christmas Carol, and you can see movie trailers and clips from the movie which feature a couple of the scary scenes.

If Disney's A Christmas Carol is too much for your child, there are some other options for young kids to get in on the Christmas Carol fun. Several kids' versions of A Christmas Carol have been released over the years. This year, Dora came out with her own version of the classic story. In Dora's Christmas Carol Adventure, Swiper the Fox travels to Christmas past, present and future and gets a chance to mend his thieving ways. Last year, Barbie in A Christmas Carol was released, enchanting little girls with the story of a beautiful young woman who has a big lesson to learn about being charitable. Our personal favorite is Disney's other attempt at retelling the timeless Dickens story -- Mickey's A Christmas Carol. Mickey never goes out of style, and he is a wonderfully charming actor.

Disney's A Christmas Carol was number one at the box office over the weekend. Did your family see the movie? What did you think?

(Photo © Disney. All rights reserved.)

According to a recent Nielsen report, kids ages 2-5 are spending more than 32 hours a week on average in front of a TV screen. At first glance, the number seems impossible. How could kids that young possibly be watching so much? A closer look reveals that the report includes time watching TV and/or playing video games, but the hours of reported TV watching alone are still staggering.

With so many different forms of kids' entertainment involving screen time, it's easy to see how the hours can add up. Kids, and their parents, may feel like they're engaging in different activities as they move from watching TV, to playing on the computer, to watching a DVD, to playing a video game...but all of these activities add up to a ton of screen time. Even if the screen time is high quality or educational (a whole new study needs to be done on that), the numbers from Nielsen are disturbing.

All of the articles on the study have got me wondering about our family's screen time numbers. As an adult who works on the computer, I don't even want to know how much time I spend in front of a screen. But I do want to know what the numbers look like for my kids. We generally keep TV viewing to one hour a day or less; however, we have Friday movie night quite often, and I never really add up the hours they spend playing American Idol on Xbox or playing Disney Fairies on the computer (they really don't have time to play those much, so it didn't seem necessary to have a rule). Then there's the educational reading program they play for school -- it's a great program, but still involves sedentary time in front of a screen. I think I'll track the screen time they put in this week, just to see how it comes out. I do think there is a difference when the program or game is educational or school-related, but there is still a point where it goes overboard. I estimate that my kids put in an average of 10-12 hours total screen time in a normal week. We'll see how close my guess is.

How much screen time do you guess your kids get in one week?

Our family is now on a great geography quest thanks to the bonus feature "Global Guardian Badge Game" on the Up Blu-ray (disc 2). In the game, players try to locate countries, states and capitals around the globe on a map. So for example, if you choose the United States, you see a map of the US and the game asks you to locate the states one at a time in random order. You just move the little arrow hanging on a balloon to the correct state and hit "enter." Or, you can choose a continent and attempt to locate the countries in random order.

My 7-year-old loves the game and determined right away that she was going to learn all of the states so she can 100%. My husband and I were shocked at how poorly we did locating the countries in Africa and Asia. So, we had to make a pact with the kids. We are going to help them learn the states, and then we are going to tackle all of the continents one by one as a family until we know them all. We promised the kids that every time they master a country or continent, they can purchase a stuffed animal that represents that geographical area. Some kids may find the game boring, as it is kind of like an interactive quiz, but the novelty of being able to locate the countries on maps on the TV is working for our kids so far, and we're going to run with it. The game has more layers that test players' knowledge of capitals, but we are sticking to the "easy" level for now! Thanks, Disney/Pixar, for giving us such an educational opportunity!

(Photo © Disney/Pixar)