Looking for fun educational gifts for kids that your children will actually love? Maybe you relate to this common gift-giving dilemma. You really want your children’s presents to be a good use of time and money, but you also want them to, you know, actually like them. Whether you’re a homeschool family or not, you likely need those educational and gift-giving budgetary funds to stretch across several categories. Here are a few of our family’s favorite (kinda sneaky) educational gift ideas for the kids…that are also super fun!
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Sneaky, Fun, Educational Gift Ideas for Kids: Great Shakespearean Deaths card game
This is a favorite here at my house! Warning: not for the faint at heart…Shakespeare loves to kill his characters off in dramatically gruesome ways.
Played in a way similar to the card game “War,” but with a twist. Each card has a Shakespearean character whose death has been rated as to its Speed, Gore and Brutality, Fairness, Piteousness, Dramatic Quality, and Last Words. If it’s your turn, you get to call which of those categories you wish to be judged on.
Let’s say you have the card for “Romeo.” You might call the category “Piteousness,” because Romeo’s score is a 9 (he only gets a 3 for “Fairness”). Sounds like you have a pretty good chance of winning, right? But my card is “Cordelia” from King Lear, and my piteousness score is a 10, so I win both cards! (You can see an older FB Live Demo I gave here)
We love Shakespeare and a bit of dramatic death, so this game is a winner at our house (except for one child who turns squeamish at the illustrations). This would also be a good option for someone who isn’t so sure about Shakespeare but who might be won over by the melodramatic gore and silliness.
Sneaky, Fun, Educational Gift Ideas for the Whole Family: Daily Art Calendar
This art calendar has been upon the windowsill above our kitchen sink all year. Each day we get excited to see what new bit of art we’ll see! It’s not just paintings. Other art includes textiles, sculpture, fashion, and even furniture!
Art study is not my strong point, but with the daily art calendar I can feel confident that all of us are getting a small daily dose of art appreciation and delight.
Sneaky, Fun, Educational Gift Ideas for Kids: Prime Climb
Math is fun with Prime Climb! The color-coding system makes it feasible for even younger students, especially if they have a bit of assistance. In fact, I have a younger child who once got quite satisfied with themselves after defeating their older and much more mathematically advanced siblings!
This game builds skills in logic, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and (obviously) prime numbers. Super sneaky math fun.
(Another fun-sneaky-math game we enjoy is Qwirkle!)
Sneaky, Fun, Educational Gift Ideas for Younger Kids: Hoot Owl Hoot!
Hoot Owl Hoot! (and the other cooperative games from Peaceable Kingdom) are great for the younger children in the family. It has especially been a benefit in our family to create an even playing field for those littles who never seem able to win fairly against their older siblings.
With the cooperative games, all players are working together to defeat the game. You win together or lose together. They teach early skills of strategy, logic, classification, memory, observation, and more. Highly recommend all of these games! (Check out this FB Live, complete with mini-assistants, where I talk about our love for cooperative board games and demo some family favorites!)
(Bonus tip: cooperative games aren’t just for the littles. Pandemic is a fun cooperative game for the older kids/teens.)
Sneaky, Fun, Educational Gift Ideas for Kids and Teens: Echo Dot (plus audiobooks)
Over time we have collected Echo Dots for each bedroom, and have gradually built up a treasure house of fantastic audiobooks. Did you know you don’t have to purchase an Audible membership to use the audible app on your device? We buy the audiobooks when they’re a good price and listen to them again and again! Even my little guy can tell Alexa what story or music he wants to listen to.
I’ve even given audiobooks as Christmas gifts before. They make great stocking stuffers. You may be wondering how that works since they’re pretty much invisible to the human eye. I create little gift cards with the title and information and put those in the stockings. Sometimes I’ve literally just written a title on a 3×5 card, so it doesn’t have to be fancy.
Alexa is good for more than just audiobooks and music, however. For example, you can play Jeopardy, enjoy indoor guided physical activity, create your own study quizzes, practice your math facts, create a choose your own adventure story, and more! Check out all the Alexa skills you might might not know about yet here.
A few of our family’s favorite audiobooks:
- Ramona Quimby Audio Collection
- Echo
- Chronicles of Narnia
- Lord of the Rings
- Jesus Storybook Bible
- Pippi Longstocking
- Pride and Prejudice
- Winnie the Pooh
Sneaky, Fun, Educational Gift Idea for all ages: Curiosity Stream
What if you gave the gift of screen time to your kids? Educational screen time, that is! Documentaries are one of my favorite sneaky ways to incorporate learning in a way that makes my kids think they’re just having fun.
Note: if you already have access to a big streaming service like Amazon or Netflix, make sure you’ve actually utilized the documentary resources already available to you there. But if you’ve run out of quality stuff to watch, you can get access to hundreds of educational videos for a minimal monthly fee at Curiosity Stream. You could also consider adding the Curiosity Stream subscription to your current Amazon membership.
What fun, sneaky educational gifts have been a big hit with your children?
Thank you for sharing your ideas! Here are a few additional suggestions from the Humility and Doxology community:
- Bella Luna Toys: Waldorf Toys, Wooden Toys, Natural Toys, and Waldorf Dolls
- Imagine Childhood: Exploring the world through Nature, Imagination, and Play
- Younger and Son Lego Pieces: Want Lego by the piece? Need a certain minifig? Only want specific parts? Find them at this homeschool family run shop!
Want more gift-giving ideas? Check out these unique gifts for Mom! And don’t miss this epic Online Book Buying Guide.
These are really unique and fun gifts, especially for older kids. Thanks for taking the time to put together this list!
Thanks, Susan! I hope other families enjoy these gifts as much as ours has. 🙂