The Best Gifts for 6 and 7 Year Olds | 2024
Based on Age and Development and Notes on Why They Work | 2024
New to the list: Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes Craft Kit and Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker. For insights on the developmental benefits of these and other GGGT picks read on.
Ravensburger Gravitrax Starter Set
Harness the power of gravity in a way that no other building toy does this well. Kids create paths for marbles to roll down, swing up, drop through, and launch forward. This exciting engineering and building toy sparks conversations and observations about potential and kinetic energy, gravity, motion, and magnetism. Children can experiment and build their own routes, complete ones from the guide book, or attempt a fill-in-the-blank puzzle identifying the missing pieces from a challenge. Regardless of how a child engages, Gravitrax will be a gift they will play with for years to come.
SmartGames Jump in’
This 1-player game from Smart Games is a logic, problem solving, and cognitive planning game where the child is tasked with the job of getting the rabbits safely to their burrows, but only by jumping over objects. Children must work with the stationery mushrooms and moveable foxes to rearrange the board for success. The challenge guide provides the setup for 60 different puzzles (and their solutions), each one growing in complexity — some of the more advanced puzzles require 50 moves to complete! It may sound intimidating but Gift Guide Go-To has tested this game on 6 and 7 year olds and the beginning challenges are completely appropriate.
Play and Freeze Ice Cream Maker
Harnessing the energy of six- and seven-year-olds while engaging their desire to explore in a hands-on fashion, this DIY ice cream maker is a win. No electricity required, just ingredients you likely have around the house and about 20 minutes free to kick or roll (we preferred the experience of rolling) the ball around and voila, ice cream! It’s a great way for a child to explore scientific concepts like states of matter, gross motor skills, cooperation, and experience the feeling of success.
Paint by Sticker Kids: Outer Space
A Gift Guide Go-To Favorite, Paint by Sticker books are engaging for the whole family. Kids simply tear out the “canvas” page and sticker page along the perforations to get started. Each empty space and sticker has a number; kids find the matching stickers, peel and place them, and they are on the way to a mosaic masterpiece, while reinforcing a child’s number recognition and matching skills.
Look Inside our World - Usborne Lift-the-Flap Book
A Gift Guide Go-To Favorite, Usborne Lift-the-Flap Books are always a great gift pick, with engaging illustrations, exciting flaps filling the pages, and facts that will dazzle young minds. Look Inside our World starts on a macro level and zooms in on Earth’s various habitats. Don’t be fooled by thinking Lift-the-Flap books are for very young children only. This book is filled with facts sure to teach a six year old lots — and maybe even to share one or two new facts with the adult reading along.
Go Go Bird Flying Toy
This easy to control remote control bird is an exciting gift for any child. Its lightweight and streamlined design helps children launch the bird on their own and the remote uses a simple joystick design to direct the bird’s flapping wings. And speaking from experience, it can withstand getting stuck in trees, bushes, on roofs, and crashing face down, too!
Osmo - Math Wizard and the Magical Workshop
Osmo is one of the Gift Guide Go-To’s favorite toys for its versatility. If you’re not familiar, it’s a stand and mirror combination that turns either an iPad or Fire Tablet into a hub for endless fun and interactive learning games. (Note, you must have the base to play this game, or any of the others — if you don’t you can check them out linked just above.) In this exciting game, children are tasked with creating potions while learning place value using tens blocks. As children work and progress at their own pace, they move on to the challenge of helping the dragons to fly by learning and practicing basic addition and subtracting. But the skills don’t stop there; this game teaches algebraic thinking, comparing larger numbers, mental math, and even operations with regrouping.
Klutz Book of Paper Airplanes Craft Kit
As children approach 7, they undergo several cognitive developmental changes. Many hit a stage of “perfectionism” meaning they like to avoid tasks where they think they will make mistakes, and simultaneously they find tasks that they can methodically start and finish satisfying. The combination of these two traits makes a paper airplane kit a great gift. Klutz, known for their high quality crafts and thorough step-by-step instructions, provides children opportunities for success at their own pace.
Kid Made Modern - Arts and Crafts Supply Library
Open-ended creative play continues to be important for children as they grow because it provides opportunities for children to explore without a predetermined outcome. In other words, there are no right and wrong ways to use these materials. Children build independence, self-confidence, and decision making abilities when they are given opportunities to play this way. And they make art, too.
Toybox 3-D Printer
Another GGGT Favorite and one that has been in the mix with our team for over five years, this “first” 3-D printer is an incredibly user-friendly introduction to the world of CAD, independence in engineering, and technology. With the use of a child-friendly app, the Toybox prints preloaded and pre-vetted designs. This is important because often open-source files can have glitches and can lead to unsuccessful prints, but if it is on the Toybox app, it will print. Toy designs vary in complexity, some made up of only one solid piece while others require the printing and assembling of moving parts like pins, gears, wheels, and more. The app is updated regularly to add new toys and to keep it running smoothly. When a child is ready, they can explore making their own designs using the app’s very basic (but child friendly) CAD interface.
HearthSong PLAYmake Kids’ 4-in-1 Woodshop
This jigsaw, lathe, drill press, and sander in one is a remarkably safe tool that facilitates creativity, design skills, and planning. The kit includes several materials to get a child started as well as a book filled with designs. But by its very nature, this toy facilitates open-ended play, presenting an opportunity for children to explore without a predetermined outcome or right or wrong ways. This builds independence, self-confidence, and decision making abilities, not to mention skills in carpentry such as turning, sawing, drilling, and sanding
Educational Insights GeoSafari Ant Factory
A way to immerse a child into the fascinating world under their feet. This ant farm is easily filled with sand from your backyard and filled with ants (ordered by mail using a coupon in the kit) who you can then watch as their habitat come to life. It includes all the tools to get started, an informative book to help aid with the care of the ants, and thinking prompts to facilitate scientific observations and questioning.
My Friendship Bracelet Maker
Making friendship bracelets has been a hobby of children for decades, but one challenge always persisted: preventing those beautifully crafted knots from twisting one around the other before the bracelet was completed. Finally, a solution. This simple loom-like toy prevents just that and keeps a child’s working strands neatly organized and separated from one another. Also note its convenient storage so all the bracelet making materials can stay together.
Franklin Sports Tetherball
Tetherball is a great game for six and seven year olds because it meets many of their age-typical growth patterns. Around this age, they have a “leap” in their gross motor coordination and are much more capable of controlling these movements; they also develop good tracking from side-to-side. In addition, although they are capable of playing large team sport games, often the competition can be overwhelming. socially-emotionally smaller games suit their developmental needs. All of these developmental markers point to this easy to assemble and disassemble tetherball game making a great gift.
Lulu Jr. My Comic Book Making Kit
Becoming an author is an exciting dream of almost every child. Help their dream come true with this comic making kit. Children engage fully in the writing process — they plan their character's journey, edit their plan, and then work on the included pages to write and draw a final draft. Finally, they can send their work away in the pre-paid envelope and it is returned to them professionally bound into a book!
Melissa & Doug Deluxe Solid-Wood Magic Set
Magic is exciting at any age, but being able to finally perform a magic trick seems almost a right of passage. This is a wonderful choice as a first magic kit because of its sturdy construction and manageable number of tricks. Children around age 6 can effectively begin to manipulate their fingers to act like tools making them quite successful at sleight of hand.
Ticket to Ride First Journey Board Game
A GGGT favorite board game, Ticket to Ride First Journey challenges its players to build train routes between cities throughout America and Southern Canada. Requiring planning, patience, and strategy, players must complete route cards matching the spaces on the board. They collect the correct colors and build routes, nearing victory with each route claimed. A great first group-play strategy game, the minimal and straight-forward rules allow children as young as six and seven to play successfully.
3Doodler Start+ Essentials
This slim, easy to hold, and completely cool to the touch 3-D printing pen is a great gift for six and seven year olds. The extruder is activated with the simple press of a button beginning a child’s adventures in open-ended creation. Or, if they prefer, they can complete one of the exciting activities in the companion guide. The guide, a wonderful way to learn how to use the pen, breaks fun 3-D designs down into manageable flat parts, teaching how to transfer 2-D elements into the building of 3-D ones.
