Top Ten Gift Ideas for Young Nieces and Nephews

When my brothers and sisters began to produce nieces and nephews for me to spoil, I promised to never give the children any gift that used batteries or had a collection of accessories and clothing to buy later. Although it eliminated some popular toys, especially dolls, this turned out to be an easy promise to keep. As a side effect, because I stayed out of toy stores, it was also the inexpensive way to find gifts that sparked their creativity.

Here are ten of the gifts that got the best response from the kids, and two rules to guide you:

Rule 1: Children like large quantities of almost anything, and if you can find unimaginably huge quantities of fun stuff for a gift, it's even better. Don't buy the usual dinky packages at the stores in the mall. Go where the pros shop. Look in your yellow pages for stores that sell school supplies and shop for classroom-sized packages of goodies.

1 - A 5- or 10-pound box of craft sticks (popsicle sticks) and a big bottle of glue.

2 - A huge bag of pipe cleaners, hundreds of them, as fancy as possible.

3 - Huge pads of paper, or a large variety of fancy papers. Get these from printing supply stores or art stores. Call a few printers and ask if they have barrels of scrap they sell by the pound.

4 - A huge box of books suitable for their reading ability and a year or two older. Shopping at garage sales and used book stores will take the sting out of this purchase. If you cooperate with another adult, they can give the bookcase for your gifts.

5 - Pounds of assorted buttons (great for beads) are available from fabric and trim clearance shops.

Rule 2: Children like to have grown-up things for their very own. It doesn't mean they will use them in the way an adult does, but they like these better than the kiddy version made of plastic.

6 - Office supplies:

Stapler, staples, and a staple remover. Make a firm rule that only the child's papers are to be stapled to other papers. The little brother, the cat, and dad's shirts are NOT to be stapled to anything.

A big corkboard to provide a safe place to staple papers.

A real whiteboard with as many different colors of markers you can find. I have seen packs of them with every color of the rainbow and more that have never been seen in nature.

A real desktop tape dispenser and a 6-pack of tape. Make a rule that only the child's papers may be taped onto the child's possessions. (Yes, the cat is still off-limits.)

If the child likes to draw or write stories, they'll like a ream or even a case of printer paper and a big box of pens or pencils.

7 - Hand tools can be an annual gift, as you expand the tool set. Forget about toy tool sets with plastic tools. Go to a real hardware store and get the real thing. Select small sizes of real tools, and buy a real tool box (red, of course) or leather tool belt for them. They last a lot longer than toy tools, and you can borrow tools from the kid for a change.

8 - Sewing tools and materials can be a gift for boys or girls. It's a useful skill for both sexes to learn. The medieval Lego castle your nephew built needs a gold lamé banner, it really does.

The premium gift would be a sewing machine and fabric, with lessons. Avoid the fancy machines with embroidery and buy a sturdy basic machine that can do straight, zig-zag, and stretch stitches. The best ones are the old metal-bodied ones. By the time a child needs more than this, they will be out of college and making enough money to buy their own.

A less expensive gift would be a fully-equipped sewing kit. Get a tool box instead of a basket because they hold more gear and last longer. Fill it with scissors, fabric glue, thread in colors that match their clothes, and an assortment of snaps and buttons.

Fabric clearance shops may sell scraps of trim and fancy fabric by the pound. The scraps make good doll clothes. Don't overlook the possibility of creating knight's armor and dragons out of sequined scraps from cocktail dresses. You haven't enjoyed Christmas until you see Lego knights in pink sequins.

9 - Take a hint from Little Men, the sequel to Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. In that book, a girl gets a kitchen of her very own with a real wood-burning stove, pots and pans, and dinnerware. You don't have to go that far, but real cookware and dishes are better than the fake plastic ones from toy stores.

Shop thrift stores and yard sales for a vintage tea pot with cups and saucers. Wrap it with some peppermint tea.

Give a selection of cooky cutters and an easy recipe.

10 - Time. Give a tiny box with several coupons in it that are for activities the child likes, like "Good for one trip to the beach", "Good for one trip to the pet store at the mall for you and a friend.", or "Good for an afternoon making fizzy bath bombs with you and a friend".