(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom / Milk and Cookies; I’m in the gradual and painstaking process of moving a number of them to this site.)

Last week, Stimey asked on Twitter for gift ideas for a 9-year-old boy. She was asking for a birthday, but the holidays are coming up. I’ve had two 9-year-old boys so far, and they do vary from boy to boy, but here are some of the things that have been successes:

(photo from Amazon.com)

Magic tricks. If you can stand the “Mom, look at this! …Oh, wait. Okay, now look! …Oh, wait. Okay, NOW,” it’s a great gift.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Sculpey modeling compound. This is Play-Doh for big kids: it’s significantly more expensive, but is also better to work with for fine details, and it doesn’t set until it’s baked. At our house the rule is that we make BIG things with Play-Doh, and we use Sculpey for small, careful projects.

(photo from Amazon.com)

InstaMorph. [Originally I linked to ShapeLock, because that’s what we tried, but when I looked on Amazon to see if they had it yet, I got results for InstaMorph, which looks like the same thing but without the high shipping cost.] This is not the most intriguing photo, but this stuff is AWESOME. It’s this hard plastic stuff, and when you put it in warm water it softens like modeling compound. And when it cools, it’s back to being hard plastic. We first bought the sample [of ShapeLock] (it’s free, but with $5 shipping, so I find it happier to think of it as a $5 sample with free shipping), and liked it so much we bought the biggest tub of it. The sample is enough to give as a small gift, since the big tub is a lot of money if you’re not sure if the child will like it.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. All the books in this series were well-liked at our house [by the kids, I mean], but I’m highlighting the journal-style one because normally I don’t think of journals as good gifts for boys, but this is one William saved his OWN MONEY for. When my boy-girl twins are older, I plan to do one birthday where Elizabeth gets a diary with a lock, and Edward will get this Boy Journal. [We’re doing that THIS VERY CHRISTMAS!]

(photo from Amazon.com)

Plasma ball. My dad chose this gift for the boys, and it was the hit of the party both times. It’s one of those things where when you touch the globe, “lightning” goes from the center to your finger.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Rock hammer. I don’t mind telling you that this gift scares me. I don’t even like the LOOK of it. But Paul chose it for William’s 9th birthday, and William has spent many, MANY happy hours shattering rocks in the driveway. We also got him multiple pairs of safety goggles, and a jeweler’s loupe for looking up-close. Scariest/best gift ever. [This was a long-term hit.]

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Rubik’s Twist. My first boy liked Rubik’s Cubes, but my second boy found them frustrating. He had a lot more fun with the Twist, which doesn’t need to be solved and can just be played with.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Chemistry set. This is one of William’s ideas, which we decided NOT to get him—but we’re reconsidering for Christmas. [By Christmas, he was no longer asking for it.] I was worried about two things: (1) He’d find as boring as I found my own childhood chemistry set, and/or (2) he’d take the finish right off the table with it.

(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom / Milk and Cookies; I’m in the gradual and painstaking process of moving a number of them to this site.)

Last week ALL FIVE of my kids were invited to the birthday party of a girl we know who was turning nine. ALL FIVE! After fretting for awhile about whether the other mother REALLY MEANT IT and whether maybe I should decline on behalf of at least three or four of them, I decided to accept. I called to R.S.V.P., and as I hung up the phone I thought of PRESENTS.

I aim for around $10 for a child’s birthday party gift. Sometimes I can get a better and more-expensive present by finding something on a 50% off clearance and putting it aside for a later birthday. But in this case I needed gifts from FIVE children, and my gift cupboard had nothing in the right age group, and I don’t have any girls that age so I wasn’t sure what she might like. I turned to Twitter for help.

Marie Green suggested a diary. Perfect! I was 9 when I got my first diary! And it’s easy to put aside for later if she’s not ready for it yet.

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Eco Snoopers Secret Diary With Lock. This is the one we got.

(photo from Amazon.com)

EeBoo Castle Lock & Key Diary.

ST suggested friendship bracelets. We got these:

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Alex Best Friends Bands Friendship Bracelet Kit.

We also bought two sets of shaped rubber bands, which are very popular in the kids’ school. [Dated trend alert! These days I would have gotten refill packs for her Rainbow Loom.]

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Silly Bandz 36-count Alphabet Shapes.

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Forest Animal Rubber Band Bracelets.

I was aiming for an ASSORTMENT of gifts, and we knew the birthday girl loved cute stuff and animals, so this book seemed like it would be perfect:

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So Cute You Could Die! I ordered it online, so I had my fingers crossed there wouldn’t be anything adult/inappropriate in it–and there wasn’t. It was perfect: page after page of photos of cute animals, especially cute BABY animals.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Pet Calendar. I was worried that this make-your-own-calendar kit [I’ve substituted the Pet Calendar because the My Calender we ordered is no longer available—but I don’t see anything that limits it to pet pictures; it looks like the same product with different marketing] was marked down to half-price because the year was more than half over, but no: you can choose the starting month. So if she wants to, the birthday girl can make the calendar go from the month after her birthday all the way to her next birthday month. Or if she puts it aside and doesn’t get to it until she’s 10, that’s okay too.

(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom / Milk and Cookies; I’m in the gradual and painstaking process of moving a number of them to this site.)

William turned 10 recently, and he had his first Big Friend Party (that is, the party was big: his friends are all standard-issue sizes), and he got a lot of presents he liked. This is the sort of thing that seems like it would make a good resource, since it seems like I am constantly feeling desperate to think of a good gift idea for a child I don’t know—especially when MY child, who is allegedly a friend of the birthday child, shrugs when asked what the birthday child might like.

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Toysmith Crystal Mining Kit. This was the biggest hit, I’d say. It was a block of plaster with crystals hidden inside, and William spent several intense sessions working on chipping them out. It was a bit messy, but cleaned up easily. And there were more crystals in his chunk of plaster than were advertised on the box, which was pleasing. And now William’s older brother is saving his allowance to buy his own kit, and William’s younger sister has been saying she hopes she gets it for HER birthday. It’s under $10, so I’m also buying one for the gift shelf for future birthday parties my kids attend. [The kids still remember how fun this was; William still has the crystals in the little bag.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

Klutz Create Anything With Clay kit. This picture doesn’t show that the book (1) is spiral-bound, and (2) comes with 8 chunks of Sculpey. Those are pretty major selling points, especially since Sculpey is so expensive: I can’t remember what I’ve paid for it, but my guess is that after subtracting the price of buying that Sculpey separately, the book hardly costs anything. William was a little cheesed that the brown that came with the kit was a different shade than the brown shown in the book. [This started an on-again-off-again Sculpey fad at our house.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

Painting on Rocks for Kids kit. I can’t tell if the product I’m linking to is the same as William’s: a customer has added photos of the rest of the kit William received, which includes paints and brushes and rocks and a carrying case in addition to the book, but the product description doesn’t include those items so….? I guess I’d write to Amazon before buying. Or, there’s also a Klutz version.

(photo from Amazon.com)

4M Brush Robot kit. Everyone in our family thought this guy was SUPER CUTE. The kit also requires two AAA batteries and a small Philips screwdriver, so I would tape the batteries to the box if I were giving it as a gift—I guess I wouldn’t go so far as to buy a screwdriver. Reviews are mixed: apparently there is some problem with quality control and making sure everything is in the box. Also, as people mention, the robot is small—perhaps smaller than you’d expect. For scale, the brush is a little larger than a fingernail brush.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Scientific Explorer Magic Science kit. This is one of the first things William opened. It’s a nice blend of chemistry and magic stuff. As with the robot, above, the reviews indicate that there are some problems with making sure everything is in the box—but everything was in ours, and people are more likely to go online to say something was missing than they are to report that everything was there.

(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom / Milk and Cookies; I’m in the gradual and painstaking process of moving a number of them to this site.)

William, Robert, and Elizabeth have all been invited to a birthday party this weekend, so I need to come up with three presents for a 10-year-old girl. She likes cats, and she likes anything cute or fuzzy. She likes Phineas & Ferb, and SpongeBob Squarepants. She likes crafts. She plays soccer. She’s William’s age and grade [at the time, this was age 10 and grade 5) and is mostly William’s friend, but she plays with everyone when she’s here. Normally I aim for about $10 for a party gift (in this case, from each of the three children) [and these days I aim a little higher than that], but I’d be willing to go a little higher because she’s a family favorite.

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First candidate: Wild Republic Floppy Orange Tabby Cat. Most households already have more stuffed animals than they can handle—and yet, the sight of this cat reduced our household to “OHHHHhhhhhhhhhh!!!”s of cuteness.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Second candidate: Rory’s Story Cubes. These look fun—but maybe they’re the sort of thing that look fun to the grown-ups, but make the kids think of school. Still, William thought they looked neat.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Third candidate: American Girls Bears Sew and Stuff Kit. William found this and liked it. There’s also owls and raccoons, but William thought she’d like the bears best.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Fourth candidate: Toysmith Crystal Mining Kit. William got this for his 10-year-old birthday, and I think it was probably his favorite gift. There’s an assortment of pretty crystals buried in a block of “rock” (more like compressed sand/glue), and you chip away with little tools until you dig out the crystals. It makes a bit of a MESS, but the sand stuff is dry and easy to sweep/vacuum up, and then you have the crystals to keep in a little bag.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Fifth candidate: Plasma ball. This is getting more expensive than I had in mind—BUT, if two of the kids chose less-expensive gifts, it would average out to being okay.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Sixth candidate: Beanie Ballz: Guinea Pig and Beanie Ballz: Penguin. They’re grapefruit-sized, very very silky soft, and all the kids are losing their minds over how cute they are. I think we’d get these two (yes, yes, two Ballz, I get it, ha ha, very funny), but there’s also a monkey, a hamster, a panda, a dog, a pink cat, a bee, and a ladybug. [Follow-up: We DID get these, and they were such a hit when they arrived, the children could barely stand to give them to the birthday child. We now have the guinea pig at our own house, as well as the penguin in FOUR SIZES.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

Seventh candidate: Temporary tattoos: mini butterflies, Temporary tattoos: henna butterflies. We’d choose a bunch of different tattoo books.

(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom / Milk and Cookies; I’m in the gradual and painstaking process of moving a number of them to this site.)

Oh, man. William has been invited to a birthday party this weekend. Furthermore, he got the invitation yesterday, which means there is not much time to think. And William is the sort of child who, if you ask him what his BEST FRIEND SINCE FIRST GRADE’s favorite color is, will say “……Humm. Maybe….blue?” And if you say, “Well, what does she like to do? Does she have any hobbies?,” will say “…..Humm. Uh….” So on the topic of this weekend’s birthday child, a classmate he has known only since school started this year, I feel very lucky that he happened to know whether the child was a boy or a girl.

And eleven is a tricky age to buy for. I don’t even know what to get my OWN children in that age range. Well, there is nothing for it but to dig up some candidates, which is something I had to do before Christmas anyway.

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Crafting With Cat Hair. I realize this is odd. I realize this is the sort of item that may need some further explanation, or perhaps would have been better suited to an assortment of unusual gift ideas. But this item is actually IN MY GIFT CUPBOARD RIGHT THIS MINUTE, because we have bought it for William for Christmas (he has already been experimenting on his own with making short pieces of yarn out of cat hair) (I know, but I don’t know whose genes to blame/credit), so I could have him give it to his friend and then buy him a new copy. [This book was a hilarious hit at our house. I don’t think anyone even actually made anything with it, but just READING it was fun. And William opened it in front of my sister-in-law who is allergic to cats and also frightened of them, so her reaction made it even more hilarious to everyone.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

Talking Hands Animal Tattoos. These are on my gift-idea list for William. It seems like the sort of thing he might love, and so maybe his friend would also love them, and at $10 they’re right in my birthday-party-gift range [they’re more like $6-7 now, and my range has increased to more like $12-15]. Plus, they’re fun but then they get used up and don’t create clutter.

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AirZooka. I gave Paul one of these a few years ago and it was SO WEIRD. You “shoot” it at someone, and a second goes by and then they get PUFFED in the face with a surprising wallop of air. Like a SPHERE of AIR. Or if you aim it at a curtain, it looks like someone threw a beach ball at the curtain except the beach ball was invisible. Freaky.

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Balloon-Powered Vehicle Kit. Considering how endlessly funny the children seem to find it to blow up a balloon and then release it and watch it splutter around the room, it seems like a pointless waste of money to pay more to get a little car and a little propeller. But…that’s exactly the kind of money that turns something into A Gift To Bring To A Party.

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Magnetic Aquarium Sculpture. The only tip William has been able to give us so far is that his friend “likes to fiddle around with stuff, like paperclips.” (In fact, William suggested a box of paperclips would be a good gift.) This is fiddly! But is it the kind of fiddly that ends up leaving tiny little pieces all over the house? We once received as a gift the kind with thin flat pieces (moon and stars) as a gift, and those sharp little suckers broke a vacuum cleaner. These shapes seem less dangerous.

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Disc Shooters. William wants these himself. But I feel a little uneasy giving a gun-related toy when so many families have a policy about such things.

I also consulted some of my older posts, and now I’m also considering the Create Anything With Clay book, the Hexbug Nano starter kit, a Rubik’s Twist, or the Crystal Mining Kit.

(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom / Milk and Cookies; I’m in the gradual and painstaking process of moving a number of them to this site.)

The biggest gift-giving challenge of my parenting years: buying gifts for Rob, the year he was 11-almost-12. [This has since been matched by 12-almost-13, 13-almost-14, and now 14-almost-15.] It took me a month to come up with even the paltry pitiful assortment of possibilities you see below, but a paltry pitiful assortment is better than no assortment at all.

(photo from Amazon.com)

1. Hexbug Nano. My 11-year-old and 9-year-old boys were so excited about this, they joined forces and saved their money to buy the habitat set, despite me saying desperately, “Wait! Wait! Don’t you want to wait until after Christmas to spend your money?” There’s a battle set I think they would have liked even better if they’d known about it, and if you want to spend more like $40 (the other two sets I mentioned are around $25) there’s the 3D Elevation Habitat Set. [The Hexbug sets are intermittently popular at our house: just as I’m concluding no one plays with them anymore, the kids get them out again.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

2. Rubik’s puzzles. Rob likes difficult puzzles like the 4×4 and the 360. William (age 9) prefers the easier Twist. They both love the Magic. If you try the harder puzzles, may I also suggest getting a book to help solve them? One of our funniest moments last Christmas was when Rob opened the 5×5 Rubik’s, tried to solve it, said, “I’d need a BOOK to solve this one!”—and then his next gift was the book. This year we got him this kerazy one (it says it’s a Square One, but a reviewer says it’s a Square Two)—it’s not a Rubik’s, but it’s similar.

(photo from Amazon.com)

3. MP3. This is the main gift we got Rob this year: the 4GB SanDisk Sansa Clip, and a $15 Amazon MP3 gift card (that link brings you to all the gift cards; the green one is the one that says MP3 on it, though it can still be used for anything on Amazon). [Follow-up from three years later: we were a little worried about getting a second-string brand, but it held up beautifully. It had one apparent malfunction, which we solved easily with the troubleshooting section of the website—I think it just had to be reset or something like that. We finally replaced it this year, only after its SECOND trip through the washing machine. I had Rob try my iShuffle but he didn’t like it at all: my iShuffle doesn’t have a display, but the SanDisk does.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

4. Phineas and Ferb stuff. This show is SUCH a hit at our house: the kids think it’s hilarious, but SO DO WE. Unusual. We considered a DVD, a Christmas DVD, a transforming Perry toy, a joke book (heaven help us), wall stickers, the soundtrack….but we went with the MP3 player instead, and got the joke book as a stocking stuffer. (We got the transforming Perry toy for William.) I think I might get the soundtrack for the car sometime. [I did, and got a second one too, and we liked both a lot.]

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5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid. These are a hybrid of “book” and “comic book.” Rob and William have both been on the library waiting list for the newest one (Hard Luck), so I got it for them for Christmas. [Edward is gettng the Do-It-Yourself Wimpy Kid book this year—that would make a good gift paired with one of the novels. (Also, notice that boys do not keep DIARIES, heavens no. It is a do-it-yourself! Like a home improvement project!)]

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6. Perhaps it is not on every 11-year-old boy’s wish list, but I think this crochet book is going to be one of Rob’s favorite presents this year. [He did like it, but I don’t think he did much with it. He likes free-form crochet better.]

(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom / Milk and Cookies; I’m in the gradual and painstaking process of moving a number of them to this site.)

I can make lists of toys I’m considering for the kids this year, and I likely WILL make such lists. But I also like to see lists of toys someone else has actually opened and played with, so that’s the theme of today’s grouping. This is mostly toys I’ve RECENTLY [er, as of two years ago when I wrote it] been surprised by and pleased with, but I’m also putting in a couple that our family has found enduringly fun to play with, and also one that I recommend you buy not for an actual child but for a grown up who likes miniatures/dollhouses (or MAYBE for a VERY CAREFUL child of the quiet and meticulous sort).

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Melissa & Doug Magnetic Hide and Seek Board. A couple of times a year, my mom and aunt go shopping to stock their gift shelves and the toy rooms they’re responsible for freshening. This is one of the toys that most impressed everyone when we opened it up to try it out. They’d already realized that each door opened to reveal something inside (cookie inside the cookie jar, car inside the garage, etc.), but we hadn’t realized the item inside would be a removable piece. And in typical Melissa & Doug “impress ’em by going one better than they even knew they wanted” form, the pieces are magnetic so they don’t scatter everywhere if you tip the puzzle.

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Caring Corners Nanny Oakes Interactive Nursery. This is another of their finds, and I think what most impressed me about it was how little I thought I’d like it, compared with how much I did like it. I don’t think I would have given it a second glance in the store: the big face on the tree doesn’t appeal to me, nor does the color scheme, nor do the babies seem particularly cute to me. BUT, when we opened it up and started playing with it, I couldn’t BELIEVE how much fun stuff there was to do, and how many little compartments and special features were hidden from the at-first-glance overview.

The idea is that it’s a daycare where a tree (Nanny Oakes) takes care of the children. Nanny’s voice is an electronic feature that can be turned on or off; if on, it suggests ideas for playing (“Who wants a snack?” etc.), and also plays sound effects (lullaby music when the cradles are rocked, etc.). A little table has a rotating layer under the tabletop, so that you can see either snacks or crafts laid out. A clump of branches opens up to reveal a tub for bathing the babies. There’s a little elevator that goes up and down in the trunk, and there’s room for a family of squirrels to live in there too. There’s a swing that holds SIX babies. Only two babies come with the set, but there are smaller supplemental sets that have more babies. My mom and aunt also found that many of the little animals from their Calico Critters collections (here’s a set of bunnies and a set of hedgehogs to look at) fit perfectly, which made it more appealing to me: I prefer the idea of a tree taking care of little woodland creatures, rather than actual babies. I get a little nervous thinking about babies being left in care of a tree, even if the tree IS sentient.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Melissa & Doug Magnetic Fishing Game. We first encountered this toy when our eldest child was a toddler receiving special services for motor and articulation delays. The therapist brought this one with her, and he loved it so much we bought it for him for Christmas. It’s looking pretty beat-up at this point, and we lost one of the pieces for good, but it’s STILL a toy I’m willing to play with and that’s after playing with it with 5 children.

(photo from Amazon.com)

I cannot explain the sheer wonder I feel when I look at the Li’l Woodzeez General Store. They have this in-store at our local Target, so I recommend going to your Target to see if you can take a look at it there. (Also, the Target price is something like $20, instead of the $37 on Amazon.) There are, like, ONE MILLION wee little pieces to arrange in the store, including tiny canvas shopping bags, jars of candies, loaves of bread, boxes of produce, plates, bolts of fabric—all the little supplies the little animals would need to shop for.

Oh, heavens, of course I’m not recommending buying this for actual CHILDREN! Ha ha! It would be a disaster within SECONDS! No, I think you should buy this for yourself and put it up where children can’t reach it but you can still gaze at it, and maybe leave the packaging on so things don’t fall off the shelves accidentally. It is so, so, so charming. There’s also a bakery, and my mom and I go back and forth about which is better. (BOTH. BOTH ARE BETTER.) [My mom bought the bakery, and she plays with it with the children, but it takes active adult participation to keep pieces from getting lost.]

(photo from Amazon.com)

K’Nex Buddies. I first encountered these when Rob and William were about 5 and 3 and I needed one more thing for each of them under the tree. Target had some K’Nex buddies sets on a great clearance, so I bought one set for each of them. They’ve been a HUGE success, and we now have several more sets—which makes it even more fun to build creatures. This is the kind of toy that gets forgotten for awhile but then taken out again and all five kids are sitting on the floor playing with it.

I chose the monster set to link to because I thought it looked fun, but I suggest buying two different sets, whichever sets are the least expensive while still looking like they have fun pieces. The real fun is the mixing-and-matching anyway, and one set is skimpy for that. If you have more than one child, this is a good opportunity for Sneaky Gift Doubling: one set for each of two children means a larger set for both of them. [We gradually bought more sets over the years; it looks like they don’t have as many anymore, but they were a fun toy.]

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Manhattan Toy Put and Peek Birdhouse. I bought this for my niece back when she was a sitting-up baby, and it was so fun to play with. The birds are so charming, and have charming little feeties, and it’s fun to show a baby at the “put things in, take things out” stage of development how to…put the birds in. And take them out.

(An earlier version of this post originally appeared on Work It Mom / Milk and Cookies; I’m in the gradual and painstaking process of moving a number of them to this site.)

I’ve been shopping for toys for my niece and nephew, and I accidentally got sucked down a Gorgeous Toys wormhole. My kids are all out of the baby/toddler-toy stage, and a LOT of their toys are UGLY and PLASTICKY. Feast your eyes on THESE riches instead:

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Small Rainbow Stacker.

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Plan Toys Balancing Cactus. I saw this in Ann Wyse’s gift post and SWOONED.

(photo from Amazon.com)

KID O Arranging Short to Tall Puzzle.

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Stockmar Beeswax Block Crayons.

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Crayon Rocks.

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Plan Toys Stacking Tree.

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Haba Magica Clutching Toy. I bought this for my nephew when he was a baby.

(photo from Amazon.com)

Kringelring Clutching Toy. This too!

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Trix Clutching Toy. This was a close runner-up!

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Haba Max. And this is so adorable I can hardly stand it!

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Schylling Musical Hand Bells. This is what we chose for our niece. My brother is very musical so I passed the idea by him first, to make sure these were more like musical instruments than like toys, and he said they looked great. Each bell has the note stickered on to the handle, and there are little song instructions.

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Plan Toys Balancing Monkeys. Oh, the wee round monkeys! And I still remember the scale I played with as a child.

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Käthe Kruse Grabbing Ring Doll. Cannot. tolerate. much. more. cuteness.

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Haba Sevilla building blocks. The price makes me die a little, but aren’t they BEAUTIFUL??