Christmas Gift Guide: Children

Welcome to the Forgiven Former Feminist Gift Guide. As I mentioned in the INTRO, I will be posting gift ideas for different people throughout the month of December. You can find my other gift guides here. Just so you know, all the links on this list are amazon affiliate links which means that if you purchase something from the links The Forgiven Former Feminist gets a small commission. Thank you for all of your support. With that being said, lets check out today's gift guide!

Buying Christmas gifts for children is SUPER STRESSFUL if you let your priorities get out of whack. I don't try to get the must have toy of the year because frankly I think that is ridiculous. If you are focused on Jesus there is no such thing as a "must have" toy.  I try to focus on gifts that are long-lasting, practical, and affordable. I also don't do electronics for our children. My younger sister gave us a tablet for Christmas two years ago and we use it to watch family movies on once in a while or if we want to watch a YouTube video to supplement our home-school work, but that is it. WE often times give what many people would consider "old school" toys and books. I also go fairly gender neutral because I think boys and girls can (and often should) play with the same toys. So, let me give you my list of awesome Christmas gifts for kids. 

Two years ago we got William this Tonka Dump Truck. He has played with it literally every single day for two years and it is still in GREAT condition. It was $25.00 when we bought it so that was his "big gift" for the year. I looked at getting the crane version this year, but I was a little concerned about how many of the reviews said that the cord broke easily. Does anybody out there have one? If so, do you love it? 

Blocks are always a hit. I have seen 12 year old boys drop their video games to play blocks! My sister gave us this Melissa and Doug Block Set before William was born. It has been used by roughly 50 kids in the last three years and it still looks new (minus the one that Henry teethed on). William loves the set of magnet blocks that a friend of ours has so I think these will probably be under our tree this year! For littler kids that aren't ready magnets but have passed beyond the simple stacking blocks, the mega blocks are a great option! We have two sets of them and they are really good. 

I am really looking in to the idea of maker play and developing STEM skills for my boys. I think I will be getting this book specifically about STEM play at home and this book about Lego building. 

We LOVE books on CD at our house. William will be three next week and his FAVORITE activity is listening to a book and "reading" by himself. We have the Clifford, Cars, Stone Soup, Bob the Builder, and several others. I highly recommend trying them out, especially in long car rides!

The boys have outgrown their baby Bibles and we are ready for them to upgrade. We are going to move them to the Jesus Storybook Bible for Christmas this year and I am SO VERY excited! William has really started to catch on to the Bible stories that we read and I look forward to adding more "meaty" stories and longer passages with him! 

What do you think? Is there anything major that didn't make the list? If I left anything off please shoot me an email at theforgivenformerfeminist@gmail.com and let me know. You can also find me on facebook, twitter, and goodreads and I would LOVE to hear your thoughts!