Gifts for children

I admit it, I'm not that much in love with technological gifts, especially for young kids. I think toys that do "too much" - don't leave stuff to a kid's imagination - probably aren't that great as the "major" toys for kids to play with. If you have a doll with fifteen programmed phrases, that sort of limits play.

Also, I never liked dolls or soft toys with too much in the way of mechanical or electronic "guts," it made them heavy and less cuddly. And more prone to break.

So, here's my probably-idealistic list of things that I think would be good toys for kids. It's strongly shaped by my own memories of what *I* liked:

1. Stuffed toy animals or rag dolls. These were my #1 favorite toy as a child. Just a plain old simple stuffed animal - not one that "did" anything but sat there. There were a lot of different ways to play with them; most often I made up 'stories' for them and moved them through those stories. But I also toted them along (the small ones were especially nice - I could tuck them in a pocket when I was climbing trees or something). Also, the smaller ones, I could build houses for with blocks or cardboard boxes. And of course, a soft toy is a nice thing to have to tuck up in the crook of your arm at night when you're reading in bed, or when you're getting ready to go to sleep. And you can even toss them around like bean-bags, though I rarely did that with my soft toys because on some level I thought of them as "alive" and deserving of the same respect I'd give a "real" animal. (Oh, I knew they weren't really-really alive; it was more, like I said, the idea that they REPRESENTED something alive, and so I didn't want to mistreat them).

I also made clothes for them, or furniture, or dishes, or any number of things. Some of my stuffed animals even had their own toys.

And yes - I still have stuffed toys. I haven't outgrown them yet and I'm coming to accept the idea that I probably never will. Well, I suppose there are worse personality quirks to have.

2. Blocks, or Lego bricks, or Tinkertoys or any sort of building toy: Again, these are lots of fun. You can make "things" out of them (like I made "houses" for some of my toy animals), or you can build towers just for the fun of knocking them down, or you can make patterns with them (mosiacs of blocks on the floor). Tinkertoys also could be moved - I remember building a sort of windmill with the set my grandmother had - and while you don't exactly learn principles of engineering from playing with them, still, I can't help but thing there's something educational about them. (We never had Erector sets or Meccano when I was a kid, but I suppose those would be even more-so in the engineering realm).

3. Boxes. Yeah, boxes. Especially big boxes like refrigerator boxes - you could make forts out of them. We rarely got new appliances in my family when I was a kid but I do remember having a cardboard box "playhouse" that my mother ordered from the Pals vitamin company (I wonder if they still make Pals?). And along with boxes for box-forts, you can also build forts with chairs and blankets - I remember doing this many rainy days when I was a kid. Either to actually PLAY I was in a fort or a cave or a tent, or just to have a quiet private place to read. (And yeah: this would make an odd Christmas present, but I bet there are some kids who would be thrilled to get a "fort kit" for Christmas.)

4. Small plastic animal sets. These were my #2 favorite toy as a child. Again, lots of different ways to play with these. Also, you could take them outside and play in the sandbox with them (or, like me, play in the mud with them) and then wash them off at the spigot before taking them back in the house. And you could build houses for them or "zoos" or farms out of blocks. These kinds of animals used to be very common in stores like Woolworth's or Kresge's....they'd come a dozen or twenty to a plastic bag, usually with some kind of theme - farm animals or zoo animals or, I once had a set of Dog Breeds of the World. I also liked these just because of all the different animals...I was really into learning about animals as a kid. I suppose for kids with different interests, the little plastic army men or the Western sets (cowboys and Indians) would play a similar role - but I liked the animals.

5. Art supplies. I think these are great for a lot of reasons - especially at Christmas when the kids are likely to be out of school for at least a week, they can help prevent boredom. (And NEW art supplies are especially appealing - even just a box of crayons where the points aren't worn down yet). This can be just about anything, considering the age and the interest of the child. Even fun coloring books and a new box of crayons would be appreciated by many kids, I think. And for older kids - there are lots of cool coloring books out there, based on designs or mandalas or Celtic patterns. I know I had some that were sort of tesselated designs that looked kind of like abstract geometric stained-glass windows (golly, I wish I remember the names of those books: geodesigns, maybe? They were a "long" format - shorter, wider books - and were printed on regular paper rather than the newsprint-type paper most coloring books were printed on). And one year I got a set of 36 Faber-Castell colored pencils in a special tin box from my dad (I still have them. The box is a little bent up and a few of the pencils are missing, but I really USED that set over the years, both for entertainment and for things like hand-drawing graphs or report covers for school.)

Also, "kits" can be a lot of fun....somewhere online I saw an idea for making a bracelet-making kit for a girl, where you pick out chunky glass or semi-precious stone beads in colors she likes, and pack them in a tin with enough hemp cord or waxed cord or whatever you want, and instructions for stringing the beads, and if you want to get very fancy, findings to finish off the bracelets. And there are all kinds of kits for different crafts in the stores and from places like Hearthsong...or if you're a knitter or quilter, you could put together a kit from your own "stash" if the child in question either knows how to, or has expressed a desire to, learn whatever the craft is. (And of course, a coupon for "lessons" would make a nice addition to the kit).

6. Some kind of "outdoor" toy. This would depend greatly on the climate but I remember one year we all got cross-country skis. And while we didn't use them as much as we probably wanted to, still, it was a lot of fun gallumphing around on them out in the yard on Christmas day. Saucer sleds are also a lot of fun but they seem to cause injuries. (I broke my nose at 13 by colliding with another person who was sledding). I think snowshoes would be fantastic if you lived somewhere with a lot of snow, and good hiking trails to take them out on. Or even those "snowman kits" I've seen that come with the eyes and buttons and a fake carrot for the nose.

7. Books. Again, you have to be sure of the interest; some kids claim to "hate" reading. But, for kids who like to read, a new book can be a great thing - especially on Christmas break, especially if the weather is bad and you can't go outside. If the kid likes to do crafts, craft books are good, too. Or magazine subscriptions: I got "Cricket" for a while growing up and really enjoyed it, and for many years, "Ranger Rick" and "National Geographic's World" were magazines that family members gave me subscriptions to for Christmas. Magazines were nice because they were mail (I always loved getting mail) and you got one every month, so you had that to look forward to.

8. Games. As long as you could entice someone to play with you (in smaller families, where the kids were pretty far apart in age, that could be difficult). Or if it was a game you could play alone. Board games. Or word games. Or card games. (We had dedicated sets of cards for "go fish" when I was a kid - they were fish-shaped, and instead of matching suits/numbers, you matched colors. I think they still make those). Or Nerf stuff. Nerf was fun, I remember, because we were allowed to play with it indoors (Well, maybe not in the living room...). Or, as a big family present, if you had space for it, something like a ping-pong table would be a KILLER Christmas gift, especially if the kids' friends didn't have one...or air hockey, or something like that. (Or, yeah, videogames, I guess, though I admit my interest in videogames is kind of limited to Tetris and Super Mario Brothers....though some of the new motion-sensing games like the Kinect system look intriguing).