Recommended Educational Gifts for Kids

Do you like to give educational gifts to kids? Here are some great ideas for gifts children will learn from and enjoy.

Math Games
Math games are great fun and good for making kids and adults think.

Lost Cities is a two-person card game. After playing cards from the five different colors in number order, the winner is determined by adding the sum, subtracting 20 and then multiplying by any betting cards. It sounds complicated, but after the first round, the rules become easy to understand.

Farkel - Math Game for Kids is a dice game that's great for kids learning place value. The lowest possible score per turn other than a 0 is 50 points. Play ends after the first person reaches 10,000.

Sumoku - Addition and Division Game - After rolling the dice, multiples of the number must be played in scrabble-like fashion. The winner is the person with the highest total when all the tiles have been played.

Speed! is a fast-paced skip-counting card game. Two players race to be the first to discard all of their cards.


Books 
In the Katie Books by James Mayhew Katie goes on adventures with her grandmother. Usually she visits art museums and has interesting interactions with the paintings while her grandmother falls asleep and waits for her. These books are wonderful for ages 4-8.

The Toothpaste Millionaire and Lemonade War are two books that are fun to read and teach unforgettable lessons about economics. Great for ages 7-12.

The Wizard of Oz and more. Dorothy is not the only hero in Oz. There are eighteen books in the Oz Series and they are all delightful fantasy novels. I know because we have been reading them all year. The kids love them. Meet the Patchwork Girl, the Rainbow's Daughter, Tik-Toc and so many interesting characters in these fantasy novels full of visual description.


Historical Games 
Each of these games were played by ancient people and are still fun to play today.

Nine Men Morris also known as Muhle or Mill is a strategy game played by the Vikings.

Tabula is a game similar to Backgammon which was played by the Romans.

Royal Game of Ur is one of the oldest known games. It is similar to the modern game trouble and was played by the Sumerians of Mesopotamia.


Building Toys
Wedgits help kids learn to follow engineering drawings as they build structures shown on the cards. They are also fun for creating interesting 3 dimensional structures.

Magnetic Construction Set is a collection of round steel balls and rods containing magnets. Using the pieces, flat shapes such as triangles and hexagons are easily created as are 3-dimensional shapes such as hexagonal cubes and pyramids.


Craft Activities
Kumihimo - Japanese chord braiding is a traditional craft that can be used to construct handles for purses, decorative trim for clothing, chords and ropes, bracelets and other decorative designs.



If you still need more ideas, check out my Recommended Educational Gift list from last year.

This post is linked to:
Relentlessly Fun
Montessori Monday

Living and Learning at Home
Hip Homeschool Hop
* Speed! is produced by Highhill Educational Supplies which is my company.
** I do not receive any compensation for any other product recommendations on this blog. I'm just a homeschooling mom who has found many products that I like. If you're interested in the products I recommend on this blog I want to make it easy for you to find them. 
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