Tools.
Kids will make use of maybe a handful of favorite toys and the rest will collect dust.
Buy them tools under pretense of a craft or activity, then you can spend time with them as well, and they'll get use out of them for years.
Last year I got my 10yo a charcoutery board, cheese knife, and some nice meats and cheese; she loved it. She's gotten it out a bunch of times since then and even set up a board for company.
Son's getting a nice handsaw and a decent hammer; we'll build some skid-flower boxes for the spring.
Kids will make use of maybe a handful of favorite toys and the rest will collect dust.
Buy them tools under pretense of a craft or activity, then you can spend time with them as well, and they'll get use out of them for years.
Last year I got my 10yo a charcoutery board, cheese knife, and some nice meats and cheese; she loved it. She's gotten it out a bunch of times since then and even set up a board for company.
Son's getting a nice handsaw and a decent hammer; we'll build some skid-flower boxes for the spring.
Perhaps because the box is good for creativity. Back in my days at the Church community center we used to have bricks, like cardboard boxes which we used to build stuff, those were the fun old days.
We also had wooden sticks, 7mm by 20mm by 100mm, just rectangular regular ordinary wood sticks, polished obviously to avoid harm. But those were also very funny to play with because of creativity and all the stuff we could build. Kind of like Lego, but wood instead of plastic.
Gave many of them away to neighbors too because he knew as long as us kids were playing with these sticks, we wouldn't ask for plastic kiked toys often shown in jewbox ads.