Sharing recipes, crafts and frugal living, the challenges and triumphs of parenting a neurotypical child and a child on the Autism Spectrum. Yoga Instructor said goodbye to her nightly glass of Chardonnay to give up habits that were not serving her purpose in life! The CocktailMom name remains, however with a new focus on healthy and authentic living.

11/19/2014

25 Gift Ideas For Kids (That Don't Involve Bringing More Plastic Crap into Your House!)

Yes, kids love to open gift on Christmas day but as a family who has often lived in small spaces, we have had to invite other ideas for gifts that grandparents, aunts and uncles could send the boys. Gifts that don't take up any room in our house. Gifts that were more experience driven rather than consumerism of stuff.
Here is a list of ideas that we have enjoyed in our house.

  1. Membership to a children's museum. For several years this was our #1 gift request because when we would visit the grandparent in their state we used the affiliate program and was able to go for free. We would often also go to a children's museum while traveling or on vacation. We got a lot of bang out of that buck!
  2. Aquarium membership. 
  3. Subscription to a children's theatre. 
  4. Spring break camp (we don't normally do spring break camps so this is special in our house).
  5. Season pass to minor league baseball games.
  6. Season tickets to college women's basketball games, we are close to the University of Maryland and the women's basketball games aren't as crowded as the mens' games which works well for our family. And the tickets are less expensive.
  7. Night at Great Wolf Lodge.
  8. Adopt an animal at the zoo, http://nationalzoo.si.edu/Support/AdoptSpecies/
  9. Tickets to an amusement park.
  10. Movie tickets.
  11. Gift card to a place where we wouldn't normally go that is an experience, for example a Pump It Up or a trampoline gym or a climbing wall facility.
  12. Magazine subscriptions. When the boys have finished reading them I take them to their school to use in their positive behavior school store.
  13. Online video game coding program, my youngest has really enjoyed this one. Learning how to make his own video game has taught him to look at all video games differently. http://www.tynker.com
  14. Online video game like https://minecraft.net
  15. Minecraft Homeschooling game, we haven't tried this yet but it's on our wish list for this year. 
  16. Gift card to an arcade.
  17. DVDs.
  18. CDs.
  19. Video game.
  20. Gift card to purchase Apps for iPhone/Ipad.
  21. Art classes.
  22. Cooking class.
  23. Paint your own pottery type of experience.
  24. Subscription service  that comes in the mail: http://www.greenkidcrafts.com/join/ delivers STEM and creative projects for the child to do at home.
  25. Gift card to book store or comic book store, I would personally rather be overrun by books than plastic crap any day of the week!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I love this list! Thanks for sharing. My sister-in-law asked if this would be appropriate for our 2yo this year. We're thrilled with the gift and her outside-the-box thinking. http://www.animalsanctuary.org/sponsor/index.html

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