Snowed In? Cousins Coming to Visit? Need a Nap? Best Holiday Movies for Kids from Common Sense Media

Holidays can be tiring for adults, but stimulating for kids. Sometimes too stimulating. But there's nothing like a good movie, preferably one which began its literary life as a book, to help young people chill out a while.

Common Sense Media has a spread of crafting ideas, best books, best music, and best movies for kids to use throughout the holiday season.

Their Best Holiday Movies for Kids covers ages 3 to 17 with multiple films for each age group, from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeerto It's A Wonderful Life, from A Very Merry Pooh Year to While You Were Sleeping.

There are the classic classics, like Miracle on 34th Street, and Dickens' A Christmas Carol, and modern classics such as The Snowman, The Polar Express, and even Home Alone. For 'tweeners, there are The Nightmare Before Christmas, Samantha: An American Girl Christmas, and Elf, to name a few of the offerings.

On screen with the listed titles are graphs which rank each movie with the familiar one to five stars. Even better, clicking on any movie icon takes you to a summary of the movie, its production date, rating (G, PG13, etc.), genre, and running time, and also ranks aspects such as positive messages, violence and scariness, sexy stuff, language, consumerism, and drinking, drugs, and smoking. For example, the review of the popular comedy The Santa Clause advises parents of Santa believers that Santa "dies" (!) at the beginning and that some of the older kids in the story insist that there's no real Santa. Other movies for young adults (14-17) point out aspects that suggest that teens should watch these away from younger relatives, which is probably their preference anyway.

Whether you stream from Amazon or other movie providers, these movies are all sure to be available.

Common Sense's complete film list can be found here.