Dubai: It’s that time of the year when your online shopping cart is filled with gifts you want to buy for family and friends. While it’s easy to shop for adults, it may need some effort to plan what to get for little children below ten.
You could look for gifts that complement a child’s natural curiosities, whether they love to create art, grow stuff, play sports, make music, or get up close with nature. Books and board games are also a great choice. If you are tired of gifting car toys, dolls, and building block sets, here’s a list of 10 ideas for children under the age of 10.
1. Wooden stackers for children below three
Not only are stacking toys colorful and attractive to children, they are also beneficial to their learning and development. Studies have shown that these toys help in developing hand-eye coordination, problem-solving skills and cause and effect understanding.
2. Rock painting sets
Here’s a gift that will keep your child engaged for hours without thinking about their digital tablet or screen. Rock painting sets come with rocks that have the right surface texture for painting and acrylic paints. It’s also a great way to develop fine motor skills, visual perception, spatial attention, and creativity among children.
3. A first diary
If your child has just started writing words, a first diary can be a wonderful gift for a child. Not only does it promote their love for writing, it also helps them explore language, express themselves, write about the day or their hopes and fears. You can opt for a colourful cover or one with their favourite cartoon character, some even come with locks. Don’t worry if your barely writes yet, you can encourage them to sketch their day or thoughts in comic styles or stick figures.
4. Puzzles
Puzzles are an excellent tool for developing fine motor and hand-eye coordination skills. As children handle the small pieces, they strengthen their finger muscles. It also helps children learn sequencing, problem-solving, task completion and persistence. Choose from various difficulty level of puzzles and number of pieces depending on the age of the child.
5. Robot building sets
If your child loves technology, a great gift for them would be a robot kit. These are special kits containing several items for constructing robots. Several companies manufacture robot kits for children starting from the age of four. Robot kits keep children engaged and serve as an educational tool. They teach them skills related to programming, physics, and design. Each robot kit features either unassembled or pre-assembled circuit boards, hardware, and mechanical drive systems. Building a robot from scratch is a perfect way to begin learning about robotic technology.
6. Card-stacking game
Stacking cards into a tower and then knocking them down is a lot of fun. It’s also great for children’s creative learning and problem-solving.
Through stacking and building games, children learn how to balance things to keep a tower upright. These games also help children practise hand-eye coordination. And they introduce children to early numeracy skills like size, height, comparison, order and so on. There are many attractive sets available at toy stores and online shopping websites.
7. Hopper ball
Want a gift for a physically active child? Get them a hopper ball. Children love hopping on these colourful balls, it gives them exercise and tires them out for the evening.
8. Charades sets
When you have a wide range of ages to entertain, nothing beats a good old-fashioned round of charades. You don’t need anything more than your imagination and a willing audience to play the game. Some charades sets even come with timers and clues to help children express words.
9. Children’s gardening set
Get your child up and close with Nature. Childrens garden tools sets usually include rakes, watering cans, shovels, trowels, soil, seeds, and pots. Start them on their gardening journey early. Digging into the soil is good for kids. While it may seem 'dirty' it can help build up their immune system. It will also teach them to care for plants.
