Use your gift-giving to tantalize kids with a variety of creative pursuits! This year I have extra items suited to kids ages 5-12, a time when electronic devices too often begin to usurp imaginative pursuits as fast as the sun melts butter.

Stem the tide! Keep them living juicy, creative lives!

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Play with Color!

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Hilarious! Watch your baby create some abstract art with this genius bib!

Crayons rock…and now there are crayon rocks! Don’t they look lovely to work with?

I love these people paints encouraging children to incorporate the whole, real, human race in their artwork.

How magical to color your own set of beautiful, wearable, butterfly wings! 

Rosie Flo coloring books charmingly combine drawing and coloring. This set features fantastical animal couture! Lots more themes to choose from.

To the Ocean Deep coloring book by Sarah Yoon unfolds to create a marvelously l-o-n-g, deep, underwater journey. 

For younger artists, unroll a jolly picture to color with these paper rolls from Mudpuppy. 

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Build cool stuff!

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This geyser car look like a blast — literally! Wild, fizzy thrills!

These clever chain reaction contraptions designed by Klutz to build from Legos will provide hours of fun and surely inspire more engineering.

My son built a rocket many years ago. So cool to build and so exciting to blast off!! Here’s a good beginner model.

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Get Cooking!

Try this classic cookbook to introduce the joy of cooking to preschoolers. Nutritious. Vegetarian. Charming.

How much fun would it be to whip up some pumpkin pasties or Mrs Weasley’s meat pies? Enjoy some literary feasting, Potter-style.

Snazzy aprons make cooking even more fun! Handstand Kitchen has a great variety of kids aprons to choose from including this bake-me-a-cake print. Nice that they aren’t all frilly, for kids who aren’t at all frilly.

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Fine Threads!

This small loom is perfect for getting started with a dynamic form of textile art. 

Stitch up some charming woodland creatures with these beautiful kits.

Wool felting is responsible for so much beauty and delight in this world. Get started with this darling hedgehog kit.

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Are you puzzled?

Block puzzles are super for the youngest puzzlers. This Eric Carle set would make a great take-along activity.

The lovely puzzles from eeboo make it exceedingly difficult to choose just one.

A double treat from Alain Grée. Winter on the front, summer on the back. Sounds like a tricky challenge!

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Write on!

My children’s homemade books are such treasures. Encourage your little ones to write and illustrate their own stories with this set of blank books.

Comics are being used to tell all manner of stories. Get your kids started by crafting some superhero comics.

Ideas galore to get young writer’s juices flowing. I would have loved this as a child…or maybe even now!

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I’m game!

Have fun and enjoy the beauty of a worldful of faces.

This animal-stacking game from Haba looks like great fun for a wide age-range.

Keri Smith is the brilliant mind behind many books inspiring us to think outside the box. This one contains great out-and-about, investigate-and-create activities — enough to last a long time and inspire many more.

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Make Music

This water whistle from Cameroon is intriguing, and even young children can enjoy making music.

How about a cool thumb harp from Burkina Faso — make music and support local artisans.

Punch your own musical notations into the paper, then crank it through the music box mechanism. Brilliant idea for youthful composers.

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Classic Play

Isn’t this doll pram gorgeous? 

We had this set of blocks for our kids. They come in very handy for constructing villages along a wooden train set!

Find gobs more ideas by using the Gifts tab at the top of the page to search past years’ lists.

I’ll be back next week with a literary-themed gift list for young book-fans.

Long live imagination!

A Big P.S. — I have restarted my Amazon Affiliate program.

This means that if you use an Amazon link anywhere on my blog to direct you to their website, anything you purchase from them at that time will result in a wee kickback for me. It does not increase the cost of your item. Just deposits a few cents in my account. Think of it as a tip jar 🙂

I would love if you would shop at your local, independent book stores instead of Amazon! However, I know that many of you do not live near any such thing, and for many of you the convenience of Amazon is what you need at any given moment. If you’re shopping at Amazon anyway — please consider linking through from my blog.

I worked extra hard to link directly to a variety of sites today in order to introduce you to folks who offer creative, non-electronic choices. I hope you enjoy perusing their collections. If it’s easier for you to purchase these products in one fell swoop from Amazon, many of them are available there as well.