Thrifty (but Unique) Holiday Gifts for Young Children
Thrifty (but Unique) Holiday Gifts for Young Children
By Dian Dewi
It’s December, and as the holiday season drew closer, you
found your preschooler saying this to you, “Mom, I want this and
that toy …My friend is going to get those from his mom. ”
When you went and checked the price online, you were shocked
with the price. You couldn’t believe that a child toy can be
that expensive. To make things even worse, you doubted that
those toys would make a good buy and did not feel good about
giving them to your precious little one.
Does this situation sound familiar to you ?
If your answer is yes, don’t despair ! Chances are, almost every
parent, have come across this situation. In one hand, you want
to make your children happy, but in the other hand, you know
that you dislike those toys and buying those expensive toys will
definitely create a huge dent in your pocket.
The question is, how are you going to deal with this situation ?
These are some strategy you can use to deal with this situation
and at the same time dramatically decrease your spending on toy
and other gifts during the holiday season. The key are: skillful
budgeting, advance planning and creativity.
To begin with, figure out your budget for each child. If you
don’t like your child’s choices of toys, you can do either of
these followings:
- not buying the toys that your
children want, but replacing them with toys that you know your
children will definitely like. - buying one toy that your
children want, and add some more toys of your choice.
To find out which toys are the best buys , I suggest you to jot
down previous toys your children got during the holiday
celebration. Make note on how often those toys are used and the
estimated price. By doing this, you can roughly determine the
cost of use for each toy. You may find that something like board
games or construction toys are the best buy. In this case, plan
on buying a different version of these toys. Chances are that
your child will also love them.
To decrease the spending, you may want to add homemade gifts to
the mix. The beauty of the homemade gifts are that they can be
unique and more personal. These features are something that the
store-bought items cannot compete with. And of course,
price-wise, they are cheaper.
In making homemade gifts, always try to make use of what you’ve
already had at home since this can decrease the cost even
further. And don’t try to replicate any store-bought toys
because you may not be able to compete in that area. Instead, go
for uniqueness and personal touches.
Here are some ideas to make your creative juices flowing:
- Personalized scrap book.
- Personalized apron for girls.
- Personalized draw-string bag for girls with some jewellery
and home-made hair accessories. - A couple of ‘coupon’ for:
one day outing, staying up late, one chore-free day and so on.
- Customs for pretend play.
- Doll accessories: clothing,
blanket, towel, diaper. - Homemade wooden blocks, felt puzzle
or personalized wooden puzzle. - Homemade bedroom decoration
accessories or a bedroom makeover. - Homemade car mats for
boys. To make one, get 1 yard of canvas fabric, seam the edges.
Paint the roads, stores, stadium, and so on. - Homemade sock
puppets. - Old toy make over. This includes: repainting an old
bike and adding ‘bells-and-whistles’ to it. - Personalized
treasure box. - Audio casette of your own voice reading aloud
your children’s favourite book. The other variation of this item
is to tell a story using your child as the main character.
- Homemade dolls and stuffed animals.
One of the best idea for a homemade toy gift is: gathered items
for pretend play. To do this cheaply, you need to plan in
advance.
For instance, you can make a doctor office set by putting an eye
dropper, syringe (with no needle), popsicle sticks (as tongue
depressors), store-bought toy stethoscope, office supply,
bandage, X-ray film imitation (use black construction paper with
cardboard backing. Draw skull on it), flashlight, cotton wool,
and many more.
You can also make a store set, detective set or other set which
you know your children are interested in. The nice thing about
homemade pretend play set is that you can use real items and is
often more complete than the store-bought one.
Finally, I would like to encourage you to think that expensive
does not mean better. In fact homemade gifts can be as
satisfying as the store-bought one. And more importantly, they
are much less expensive.