Posting this in the Simple Living community a well, but thought I might a different perspective and additional input here.
Christmas is coming and I have a two year old and a five year old. My wife and I are pretty stumped about what to get our kids for Christmas. The two year old is easy; he doesn’t care, will be thrilled with a ball, and just happy to be included.
The five year old is very down to earth and grateful for anything, but he already has everything he needs because up to now we’ve tried to be smart about buying him things that will last and give him good enjoyment mileage. He has plenty of Legos, an assortment of figurines (farm animals, fantasy creatures, little play houses, action figures, cars.), plenty of outside balls and whatnot. He also doesn’t need consumable stuff (has plenty of candy from Halloween, crayons, coloring books, crafty supplies)
He doesn’t need more stuff, but we still want Christmas morning to feel special and exciting and we want him to have a good “Santa came!!!” experience. I like the idea of giving experiences like tickets to Disney on Ice or a voucher to an ice cream shop, but that just doesn’t have the same effect for a five year old, cause he can’t hold it and it’s really just a promise for the future.
Any advice or suggestions would be really appreciated!
Thank you all and much love from me to you!
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Buy him a book series you read to him. It’s a great way to instill a love of reading and bonds you together.
If you don’t want the books hanging around you can teach him about donating or selling them so others can enjoy.
Oh this reminds me I was thinking he’d like the Magic Treehouse series. I’ve heard good things about those books
My son loved those books and they are a great way to talk about history.
“You know something like this really did happen.”
He eventually tired of them because they are very formulaic but not for 20 or so :)
We picked up a ton of used copies but they also have them at libraries. There is a story line arc but it’s pretty thin; you can read them out of order if you can use your imagination to gloss over those parts.
I remember being a kid well enough to know that there is no such thing to a child as “enough Lego”. Give them something new to build on Christmas morning. It doesn’t need to be huge, just new. They may only have a few more years before new Lego are no longer exciting. Hell, I’d still have rather got a new Lego set than more than half the other crap people get me every year even if I struggle to muster that grade school excitement.
Obviously this does not imply that he should keep all his gifts for all time. Regifting isn’t always a dirty word. If some other kids hadn’t upgraded to Super Nintendo and lost his old Nintendo, I’d have never gotten a Nintendo at all.
Lol you’re absolutely right
How about a telescope? There are some relatively affordable models around. It’s potentially educational and a chance for a shared experience. The experience will be you look at the night sky together, talk about space, stars and galaxies…
I’ve got this on my radar, he’s already interested in going out at night to see the stars and moon with my constellation AR app, but I’m gonna save for a future Christmas, thank you!
Maybe you can get him something physical that is also experience-based. Like one of those cool kits where you get a box of sand you can dig out and find fake fossils/treasure. If you want to take it up a notch, you can buy lab-grown rubies, emeralds, and/or sapphires for less than $20 online and bury those as a true “treasure” keepsake. Or something like a kid-oriented metal detector, or some other outdoorsy toy that can offer both experience and something fun to open on Xmas morning
Good idea he loves that kind of stuff!!!
I think a collection might be a good suggestion. something for them to grow up with and have expand. Minerals are amazing for kids at that age especially. But really, anything.
Except the Legos. You’ll be bankrupt by college.
I have a 3 yo daughter and 7 yo son. She loves music and he loves books. They LOVE their tonie music box. My daughter is special needs and the tonie box is a music box. You can buy ‘tonies’, which are audiobooks and soundtracks to their favorite shows. The box runs $99. The individual tonies cost ~$18 a piece (same cost as buying a music album). Both kids adore the box and it’s a great way to get them from shouting at Alexa to play music.
“Oh no, that didn’t work. I think your password is wrong.”
😡😡😡
For those who may not be familiar with the tonie box - once set up, the tonies auto-play when set on the box. Never had a password issue.
My 3 yo autistic daughter can use it without issue. Not sure what problem you are running into.
Yes, once it’s set up it’s great, but there’s a lot of connectivity issues for some people when attempting the initial setup.
There’s issues with connecting to 5Ghz Wi-Fi, so they recommend trying 2.4Ghz, which can also refuse to connect to some reason (prompting the error message I shared, and which is wrong).
To set ours up we needed two phones. One with a hotspot running with Max Compatibility enabled, and then a second one with the app connected to the hotspot to get past the initial setup. After that we could switch the connection to 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi and leave it. It can be a very frustrating experience, especially considering how much you’re paying for it all.
Also for anyone considering buying, when you buy a new figure to use it first has to download the audio to the box before you can use it “offline” away from an internet connection.
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This is always a difficult question that I face every year! Sometimes there is a big item they need like a bike or a drawing tablet - but often there isn’t anything obvious.
Something that I’ll often do is get them digital goods, because they take up no physical space. Often, it winds up being a new downloadable video game or an expansion to a game they already own. I try to be thoughtful about what they like & I research the games in advance to find something unique to them and fits their interests. I download the game to a device in secret on Christmas Eve and then find something physical that they can unwrap (like cardboard with a game picture inside or something). Then as soon as they open it I explain why I choose it & why I think they’d like it & etc and I get in their hands quickly so it feels more visceral.
Others will disagree about this strategy, I know, but it prevents accumulating a lot of junky unnecessary items. My kids are in middle school & high school now & they have very few possessions compared to their friends. What’s nice is that they take a sort of pride in only having few high quality items rather than a room full of junk.
We also stop buying them (& ourselves) “necessity”-type items like clothing beginning around September, and then they get to unwrap a bunch of boring things like socks & pants & and soap at Christmas. Lol! Are we the worst? Maybe.
This is a great idea having a physical representation for an intangible gift, thank you!
