childrensplay – Mother-Care Journey

I want to start this blog post by saying that I am not advocating that parents need to buy their children more toys. I am definitely team “less is more” when it comes to toys. I know how it feels as a parent to see the clutter all over our house from toys and parts of toys and trying to keep things organized. This list of gift ideas is simply a guide if you’re looking for a gift for your child for the holidays or for a birthday, or if you’re looking for a gift idea for someone else’s child. These are toys/games that I have found engaging, and children can get a lot of play out of, in addition to fostering creative and imaginative play. I am also a big fan of books and I have tried to steer more towards books as gifts for my children however we do get the odd toy here and there and these have been some of my favourites that I’ve seen or heard of, and toys that we have at home.

Non-Toy Gift Ideas:

If you’re looking for non-toy gift ideas, there are lots of good ideas of gifts that children will love and are more experience-related than something they can hold in their hands and play with. Here are some ideas:

Purchasing a membership to a local museum or play place for the child that they can visit
Signing up the child for a book or activity delivery service that mails them a gift once a month – it’s something nice to look forward to and children usually love receiving mail that is addressed in their name
Getting the child a fun pass or tickets to an upcoming event that they would enjoy
Planning a day out with the child and wrapping up the “activity menu” for the day or giving them choices and having them plan their own day out with you (i.e. movie theatre tickets, a visit to their favourite ice cream shop, a hike, a trip to the library, drinking hot chocolate together at a local coffee shop, etc.)

A Little Note on Choosing Toys

If you are looking for toys, then the thing with toys that we want to watch out for, is will my child play with this toy once and then it’ll go into their toy box forgotten and add to the clutter in our home? Or is this a toy that does the playing and thinking for my child or is it a toy that elicits thinking, creativity and cultivates a skill of some sort for my child?

My favourite type of toys are those that are open-ended and can be played with in several different ways. They are the toys that don’t necessarily have all the flashing lights and sounds (which can be overstimulating for some children and a bit hard to cope with for parents 😊).

Here are some ideas for gifts that accomplish the goals listed above. I have the gifts categorized by very general age ranges- you know your child best and what they like and what would be suitable to play with at their age and developmental level.

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