Gifts For Kids

And I do mean that in the nicest of ways!

Kites are the local theme in the gifts arena in our family these past few weeks. Five weeks ago, walking the aisles of our local Toys R’ Us, my husband discovered a treasure. A kite clearance sale where 20 kites were offered for a mere $10! Yes, you read it right, only 50 cents per kite. A fan of flying just about anything through the sky be it hot air balloons, RC planes/gliders, rockets or kites, he simply couldn’t resist the offer and came back home with a pile of colorful plastic kites.

He’s been flying them ever since then, whenever there’s some wind and available time. We’re down to about 10 kites by now, as five were given as gifts to other kite afficiandos, and five have come to their final resting place at the top of various tall trees in our town.

I’m not sure where you can find such an amazing bargain again, but I can tell you that those kites made for wonderful gifts for kids and adults alike. They were durable and flew extremely well, despite their low price (and our low expectations). Flying a kite seemed to thrill both boys and girls. I confess, my 37 year old husband probably enjoyed the kite flying more than our 4 and 6 yo kids. They loved it for the first 10 minutes or so, but after that, the excitement only peaked again when something dramatic happened (such as a kite breaking loose with the entire family chasing it - thank Goodness there are tall trees all around!).

Browsing through Amazon.com for some kite images to use in this point, my youngest son Dan was around and insisted on “kites with super heroes” on them, so consider this the top three kites, as selected by four years old boy with a passion for Superman and his pals: Captain America, Spiderman and Speedy from the movie Cars!

There were two things that bothered me about the kites. They were not environmentally friendly and they were not old-fashioned homemade kites. So, I’ll end this post with links to a few online pages that I found that teach you to make your own eco-friendly kites. These can make splendid gifts for kids of all ages and you can personalize them too!:

Make Your Own Homemade Paper Kite

Extremely easy to make paper kites

Writing that first post on a new blog can be rather intimidating. Hey, it IS intimidating, but also a nice challenge. Looking at this nice colorful theme that we have here, selected by my four year old son, is actually quite inspiring for me! Kids are my main focus here, their pleasure and benefit from gifts purchased for them by adults. And not just purchased either! Homemade gifts for kids can be just as interesting a topic for writing about as any fancy present bought for money, maybe even more so.

Being a mom to two boys blessed with curious minds (the boys are, well, and ok, I’d like to think I am as well ;)), I can only imagine that science related gifts for kids will be a main theme in my blog here. Expect chemistry, physics, astronomy and biology to be featured in many gifts ideas.

I also suspect that “girlie” gifts might be less prominent here. I do have four wonderful nieces, aged 1-5, and I do buy them gifts for their birthdays and other occasions. Whether I go for something pink and girlie, or something broader in gender scope, has a lot to do with my mood on that day I confess, I have my reservations about gender bias, walking through the “pink” aisles in toy stores. More than once, we got the girls trucks and toy work tools, to compensate for that! Then again, sometimes I just can’t resist a pretty doll or a pink handbag… so I imagine “gifts for girls” will show up on the blog every now and again.

What else? oh yeah! I’ll be adding a contact form soon, where you can contact me and suggest gift ideas, will post about that as it comes along.

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