Which holiday gifts will make your kids’ faces light up when they open them AND still be among their favorites years down the line? We share our picks for gifts that go the distance – for every age and every price range – in a special ENCORE presentation of Episode 28 (specially updated for 2016). Join us!
Our 2015 Holiday Gift Guide – UPDATED for 2016!
We spent most of Episode 28 talking about toys and gift for kids that get played with year after year (and kid after kid). Since we mentioned a TON of products and ideas during the podcast, we’ve tried to break them down by category here. All links have been checked for 2016, and updated as necessary!
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Gift Guides & Resources
- 7 Toys Your Kids Will Still Be Playing With Next Christmas (Meagan and Sarah for The Happiest Home)
- Baby’s First Birthday Gift Ideas (Sarah for Scottsdale Moms Blog)
- We love Cool Mom Picks for their unique and often small-business friendly gift guides – here’s their 2015 guide! [UPDATE: Here’s their 2016 guide!]
- Our favorite catalogs: Magic Cabin, One Step Ahead, MindWare, Lakeshore, and Hearthsong [UPDATE: Sarah’s loving Fat Brain Toys this year, too]
Gifts for babies & toddlers
- Sarah loves Fisher-Price Little People – the Fisher-Price Animal Sounds Farm, and Builders sets like this one are a great precursor to Duplo and LEGO
- Little Tikes Cozy Coupe
- A crawl-through play tunnel like this one from Melissa & Doug
- Play kitchen (Sarah has one from Step 2 similar to this)
- Standing easel (we like this one from Melissa & Doug)
Gifts for preschool & little kids
- The expensive-but-so-worth-it Magna Tiles
- LEGO Duplo starter sets like this one
- Schleich plastic animals like these dragons
- Inexpensive knock-offs of more expensive brands, like Li’l Woodzeez and Our Generation
- Doll house (Sarah loves this one from Melissa & Doug)
- Play silks from Magic Cabin
- Puppet theater
Gifts for big kids & teens
Other great stuff we talked about
- 7 ways to survive playing board games with your kids (Meagan for The Happiest Home)
- Meagan’s interview with Sarah Mackenzie on the Read Aloud Revival podcast
- The Overdrive app that connects you to your local library for digital lending, and the Kindle Lending Library for Amazon Prime subscribers [UPDATE: Sarah’s using Hoopla Digital now, too!]
- Rebrickable, the site for LEGO lovers that provides instructions for new creations based on the sets you already own
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