Thought-Provoking Gifts For Young Kids? 458
An anonymous reader writes "Societal norms and my sibling's procreative endeavors have put me in the position of having to buy gifts twice a year for young children. What makes them happy are unremarkable bits of plastic. They already have innumerable unremarkable bits of plastic (from their parents and grandparents). My preference would be to get them gifts that challenge them to think creatively (or at least to think), which they'll be able to pick up and enjoy even after they outgrow their train/truck/homemaking fetishes. Beyond the Rubik's Cube, what thinky toys from your childhood are still in production? What new thinky toys have you discovered that work for the 5–10 age range?"
Re:A bigger Rubik's Cube (Score:1, Interesting)
LEGO!! (Score:4, Interesting)
I actually still like the little plastic blocks. I think that's what started or at least cultivated many an engineer's interest in the trade. Just get them a box with mixed blocks and they'll keep it for their kids when they grow up. My parents gave me 1 small kit when I was young (back when they had less custom blocks - the newer series are actually going back to those roots it seems) and then whenever I got some cash or gifts for good report cards I would expand until by 16 years old I got a whole city that took up the whole attic.
Couple of obvious suggestions (Score:3, Interesting)
Lego is always going to be the obvious suggestion in cases like this. Not the pre-packaged Star Wars/Transformers/whatever licenced stuff, but a plain old box of bricks.
Alternatively, though this might seem a strange suggestion taken at face value, that old 1960s favorite Spirograph can be an interesting stepping stone into all kinds of clever thoughts about geometry/mathematics. Plus you get some pretty pictures out of it.
Marble tracks (Score:3, Interesting)
As said above, it's hard to go wrong with Legos.
5-10 is a huge range to generalize about.
On the lower end of the range, books are great. They're starting to read or reading more but probably haven't decided what kind of books they don't like yet. There are several modular marble track systems on the market, Some even integrate with the Duplo-sized bricks. Everybody enjoys these.
The upper end of that range will want to choose their own gifts. Finding out if they're into Nintendo DS or another specific system can narrow the choices in a helpful way.
Capsela (Score:3, Interesting)
The Dangerous Book (Score:2, Interesting)
My new standby (although you can only really use it once per child) is a book. Two actually:
The Dangerous Book for Boys
The Daring Book for Girls
Check em out on Amazon, actually really interesting stuff. The gist of it is it's all the stuff that a well rounded kid should learn as they grow up.
A little off the wall, but.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Ask your siblings if there's a particular piece of furniture that the kids could use in their room(s), (coffee/play table, dresser, whatever), find a used one cheap, get a bunch of paint and decorative type stuff. Spend a day decorating it with them, and you're set. Hell, you could even attach Lego mats to a coffee table and tether some basic tools to it, if they're into that sort of thing. I tried something like this a few years back and it worked really well.
Lego's a GOOD one, but,CHESS is a GREAT one... apk (Score:1, Interesting)
I cannot BELIEVE none of you mentioned the immortal game of CHESS...
APK
P.S.=> Why'd I note it? Ok - Chess is NEVER the same game twice, & demands thought, a LOT of thought, and it varies by opponent and the style they play/use! Since you asked for "thought provoking", I could not think of a better game than this from my personal experience (been playing since I was 8, & have played, literally, 10's of 1000's of games since)... apk
Re:How about (Score:5, Interesting)
My 4yr old nephew loves books. In part because it means with spent time with him, at first it was to read to him; but last time I was tired and had him"read" it to me, I was marvelously funny to get his vaguely relevant ad-lib intermixed with lines he remembered verbatim. I'll do that again !
K'NEX, not just for kids ... (Score:5, Interesting)
On top of Lego, K'NEX are pretty amazing pieces of construction material. As a kid, I started training with the basic sets, then got into the "master" sets.
I bought myself a K'NEX set called "The big ball factory," and some other sets of spare parts. My computer geek / engineer colleagues came over one night for a few to many beers. Everyone had a plan one how to improve the damn thing. There were four folks working in parallel on different sections at once, and showed no intention of stopping, and lost all track of time . . . just like what happens when you do hard core coding.
My girlfriend quipped to the other girlfriends, that if the beer didn't run out, she would have to chase them all out with a broom. Most of the girlfriends found the behavior "cute", especially since with every improvement, one of the guys would run to his girlfriend, and say, "Look, Romy, at that thing that I just built!"
When the folks were leaving, one of the chicks said, "I'm glad that these toys are in your apartment, and not in mine."
Re:150 in one (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What's Wrong with Happy Kids? (Score:5, Interesting)
Try being the "fun uncle" instead of the "odd uncle who's always trying to make them into something they're not."
I did that "fun uncle" thing, and showed my nephew what you could make out of ammonia and iodine crystals (nitrogen triiodide, NI3) and postassium percholrate, aluminum powder and sulfur.
How did that story end? He is applying to grad school to get his Ph.D. in chemical engineering. He got an 800 on his math GRE, so things look good.
He lives on another continent than I, but the last time I visited for Christmas, he gave me a book titled, "Backyard Ballistics."
I never got the chance to show him how folks at Princeton's eating clubs peppered other eating clubs with water ballons launched from funnelators (giant sling-shots, made with surgical tubing). Some folks that I don't know, and don't know me planned to launch a few at George Bush, Senior, when he visited the campus in 1984. Those folks that I didn't know changed their minds, when Secret Service folks showed up on the rooftops of the eating club.
Re:What's Wrong with Happy Kids? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let me tell you a story (Score:5, Interesting)
When I was a kid, my dad would often tell me that if I do well in school, he would pay for my college, and if I don't, he would buy me a giant shovel, the kind they use on the farm to move cow manure for my 18th birthday. He would also take me to my grandfather's farm every now and then, just so that I'd see those shovels getting used.
I never got the shovel. I choose the path which implied a six figure income instead. So one could say that even though the shovel never materialized, it was pretty thought provoking.
Re:Lego (Score:2, Interesting)
Seconding Lincoln Logs. I loved my lincoln logs set. If you can, get one of the older sets that didn't have as many specialized plastic bits - these days the sets have flags, horses, people, etc that detract from the number of actual wooden logs in one set and restrict the building possibilities. I used to spend hours with my set.
Also good were strategic board games (especially stuff like Risk, Checkers, Chess, chinese checkers, Mastermind, and Hi-Q [educationa...ggames.com]. We also had a pair of Soma cubes [mathematis...teleien.de] (like 3d Tetris!) with a booklet of shape puzzles which provided endless hours of fun and spatial reasoning practice. These things are mostly cheap and in the case of the Soma cubes were in fact "unremarkable bits of plastic" - they were just educational, interesting unremarkable bits of plastic which I still remember as being great ways to spend a rainy day, and they're open to kids of almost any age because they're SO simple to start with, but they scale beautifully as the kids age. I guarantee - if you hand your nieces/nephews a Soma cube set they'll have to wrestle it away from their parents before they can play with it!
Tool kit (Score:3, Interesting)
Get them a tool kit. One of those hand-held plastic trays with a hammer, a pair of screwdrivers (X and --), a jigsaw with some different blade types, two clamps of any small type, some sort of measuring device and - if you want to be extra fancy - a hand-operated drill. Add a bottle of wood glue and a box of smallish nails. A carpenters pencil comes in handy as well. My 5 yo daughter made a candle holder for her birthday, heart-shaped with nails at the edges to hold the candles after I told her I did something similar for Yule when I was 6. A little help here and there and before you know it they'll make their own 'toys' which are twice as much fun as those plastic bits mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Plywood, hardboard, those waste bits of wood you're left with after doing some construction all come in handy.
I used to live next to a carpenter from birth 'till about 7. He had this barrel with leftovers in his backyard toolshop which I was free to pillage. I was lucky.
Meccano (Score:3, Interesting)
If you're going along those lines:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meccano [wikipedia.org]
Re:Gimme something fun ! (Score:3, Interesting)
A few that may work for all generations.
Lego.
Music Instruments.
Hammer, Saw and nails.
Board Games.
Re:How about (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe we need something like what I had when I was a boy:
Maths, English (Literature and Language), Latin, Greek Classical Studies and History.
Little of this might be considered "relevant" in a modern context, but I still believe I got a more worthwhile education than the drones currently being churned out. Given how history has an unwelcome habit of repeating itself, a bit of attention to the past is not necessarily a bad thing.
Re:How about . . . WRONG!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
"The problem with books is that if the parent is a religious fundamentalist type, you end up donating to the local circular file."
That only indicates that you insist on picking things that will insult the child's parents. The question was phrased by someone who wants to get what is best for the child, not someone who wants to insult the family.
Yes, it is inappropriate to give a child books with sexual themes. It is inappropriate to give a child books that belittle what the parents believe. Even if you worship at the Throne of Darwin, not everyone does. When in doubt, ask the parents advice. It will help you win in the long run. The child will reach an age where they make up their own mind. If you want to still be in the kid's life, then show a little respect.
It's the adult thing to do.
"Worship at the Throne of Darwin" doesn't exactly show an example of being adult.
I think we can all agree that most religions are mistaken. Zeus, Odin, Vishnu, Jesus' miracles - I think you'll agree that at least three out of the four do not exist. There is no one religious view that reach the majority of children. That means that most children are being taught lies. In my book, that's child abuse. You're saying that the "adult" thing to do is to allow child abuse - in the form of indoctrination - until the child is old enough to "make up their own mind" - which they don't. Most people believe the same thing as their parents. The chance of getting the abuse to stop - the children to stop re-doing the abuse on their own children - is to start when they're children.
Oh, and by the way: "The Throne of Darwin" indicates to me that you disagree with "evolution". I contend that I have never talked to a person that disagreed with modern evolutionary theory. Everybody that disagree disagree with something else - because they do not understand what modern evolutionary theory claims.
If you want to be consistent with evidence and believe that God made the Earth in six thousand years and that evolution had no place in it, there is only one way to do this: You have to believe that God created the Earth so that it was supposed to look like it had been made by evolution. And he could have created it five minutes ago, with fake memories in you.