Awesome gifts for kids

With all the disposable and cluttering toys out there, I'm always excited when the kids get a truly useful gift that will last for years. Please feel free to share more gift ideas for kids.

A friend of mine showed how carefully she had been listening to my young daughter's chatting and bought her a mortar and pestle after my kid told her about the herbal remedies she was concocting to treat her siblings mosquito bites. She had been using some stones to grind the leaves.

A week later my friend gave her this gift:

I love gifts like that! Useful, fun, and beautiful! You can get mortar and pestles made from so many different beautiful stones.

A few months back, I taught my kids' class how to make milk paint, and I brought in my 3 mortar and pestles for the kids to grind charcoal for black pigment. They LOVED it. Mortar and pestles are super fun to use, and beautiful to look at!

Nicole Alderman wrote:
A few months back, I taught my kids' class how to make milk paint, and I brought in my 3 mortar and pestles for the kids to grind charcoal for black pigment. They LOVED it. Mortar and pestles are super fun to use, and beautiful to look at!

Were you able to get them clean after that?
My kids were making charcoal paint last week by smashing it with rocks and hammers. It didn't get very dark and was pretty gritty... The mortar and pestle would have been more effective but I would be worried about using non-food stuff in it.

I used wood char, from my woodstove. Charcoal is usually considered inert (sometimes people eat it for stomach ailments), so I wasn't too worried about reside. I also don't usually use my mortars and pestles for food. I did find when I ground up cochineal to make a woodstain, the stain was a lot darker than I was expecting, despite having cleaned the mortar and pestle.....probably some of the residue remained! I think I probably should have tried it in one of my lighter mortars which would be easier to see when it's clean, rather than my black one!

My lighter colored mortars didn't show any sign of being stained. If you wanted to be extra careful, you could use charcoal just from edible woods, like apple and alder and maple.

I actually just packed up my mortars and pestles to take to my kids' summer Forest School tomorrow, so those kids can grind up charcoal and make milk paint, too!

I wonder if your charcoal paint was so gritty and hard to smash because it might have come from a campfire, and the wood wasn't totally charred through-and-through? I only used charcoal from my woodstove, and I know historically people made charcoal by smothering the fire so that the coal didn't burn away entirely. I wonder if the lack of oxygen in my stove made a more...developed...charcoal?

Starting at about 5:22, BBC's Tale of the Green Valley shows how charcoal was made in the past.

A set of stubby screw drivers - nice size and shape for small hands and pretty colours too! Only problem that arose when my sister gave my son a set, was that Dad was jealous!

When my grandparents downsized from their home to a retirement community, my dad went through my grandpa's old tools and tool boxes. He picked out a tool box and filled it with my grandpa's old tools. Each of child got one of Great-Grandpa's old toolboxes, filled with Great-Grandpa's old tools. My dad made up larger tool boxes for me, my husband, and my brother as well. I think it was one of the most beautiful and amazing gifts we've ever received. Such a powerful way to pass along memories, skills, and tools to the next generations.

Another useful and fun gift idea is a hand-crank drill. My kids really love using their Fiskar's Hand-Crank drill. It's a lot harder to hurt yourself with one of these, compared to an electric drill.

these do tend to strip out pretty easily

The Fiskars ones do tend to strip out easily. I think I might upgrade them to an egg beater drill

my son loved using these in his woodworking class in 2nd Grade

Probably the safest form of charcoal for consumption and for topical herbal remedies or "paint" is food grade made from organic coconut shells, which is often sold for use internally to absorb unwanted organic toxins and metabolites, and should be equally safe when used topically.

We used to enjoy playing the 'wicked uncle' and get active things for our nephews and nieces (does anyone else call them 'niblings'?) Real tools are a great idea - and grandad's will probably last another lifetime.
Another idea is craft kits - enough wool and needles for knitting a pair of mittens, cookie making sets, grow your own beans....

It might seem goofy, but if your kids want to learn as you are working on projects getting them some personalized P.P.E. (Personal Protective Equipment) that it is well received. It is also keeping them safe!



A pair of work gloves, safety glasses, and ear muffs will have them excited when they are with you while you are working with power saws.

A pocket knife...... lol a or kids used to o carry knives, I carried one when I was like 8 years old. Walmart has $5 pocket knives, so I got each of my kids one, to go in their stockings this year. A $5 dollar knife probably won't last long, but a folding buck 110 can last a lifetime.
I also got my boys an axe when they turned 10, and each kid gets a .22 rifle when they turn 13. But those are more symbolic gifts, to represent milestones in life.

One of my young nephews was a very visual, hands-on kid, always building stuff.

So in addition to his Christmas present I gave him an electronics "project box" with battery packs, alligator clips, wire, connectors, electrical tape, DC motors, lamps, switches, and all sorts of stuff from my junk box of scrounged DC parts. Dear Wife thought I was nuts, giving used junk as an additional gift.

But nephew loved it! He's a tradesman now with his own business. And he never forgot the project box -- in fact he mentioned it to me the other day, 20+ years later. (Bet he doesn't remember what the official Christmas present was.)