The Holiday Gifts Our Kids Liked Best

I got this as a very last-minute Hanukkah gift at the Fidi Whole Foods near our office — it has a small selection of toys next to the baby food — and it’s been a real hit in our house. It’s one of the only games that my almost-4-year-olddaughter and my7-year-oldson can play together without murdering one another. And the old-timey candy art on the pieces is very pleasing to look at.

This was my 7-year-old’s “big” present from Santa, and he just finished putting it together. It’s a super-fun “build,” as the kids say, with a lot of little secrets like a treasure chest. And now that it’s complete, he’s actually playing with it (which I can’t say for many of the other LEGO sets he owns).

After we got my son theBop Itearlier in the year (it’sanother excellent gift),Simonfelt like a fun follow-up and he’s been playing it nonstop.

We shoved one of these into Aoife’s stocking and she has not stopped talking about it. All other gifts forgotten.

Also the talk of the town, a set of Disney Princess lip balms. She likes to choose her flavor each time.

I wasn’t sure if this was a little advanced for a 3.5-year-old, but Aoife is totally hooked. We averaged three or four chapters at a time over the holidays, and have “played” faraway tree everywhere from the park to the swimming pool.

We’d been considering getting a Hot Wheels racetrack for our 2.5-year-old but found this instead, which we much prefer, since — unlike those racetracks — it has very few parts, is not liable to break, is endlessly reconfigurable, and is all about open-ended play. What we discovered after unboxing this is that our 10-year-old loves setting up the track over furniture and stacks of books and toys and pillows, and she and her brother have spent hours together sending cars down, adjusting the track, and racing some more. It has surpassed all expectations. And we think it’s so good that I just bought a set ofBlu Track’s add-on ramps.

The same 2.5-year-old is obsessed with music, especially making music, and so when one of the grandmothers asked what she could get him, we told her any musical instrument — “just not cymbals.” She did not read the entire text message. But this is his favorite present by far. (And while it’s notnotloud, it’s actually not as loud as some of his drums.)

My older son, who is 11, loved this LEGO Ninjago building set. It occupied him for a full screen-free evening and then went on prominent display in his room.

My younger son, Solomon, is obsessed with a Hello Kitty doll dressed as a giraffe that he got in a claw machine, so I got him this one that is dressed as a bear. The exact one I bought is sold out, but this Gund version is similar, and there are two other Sanrio characters (CinnamorollandKuromi) from the same series that are still in stock. He was very happy with it: “Now I have two Hello Kitty dollies!”

Solomon loves the Pixar lamp and even consideredgoing as it for Halloween, so when I saw thisLEGO set, I had to get it for him. It’s too advanced, obviously, so I ended up building it myself, and then I saw that you can add athird-party light kitto it, which makes the entire thing even more fun. As I was putting it together, Solomon especially got a kick out of the hidden Easter egg–type callbacks to different Pixar characters; inside the lightbulb, for instance, there is a truck that’s made to look like the Pizza Planet truck fromToy Storythat has zero function to the larger lamp. (There are also segments that have the colors of Nemo, Woody, Buzz, and other favorites built into the lamp that are hidden from view.) The light kit was super-easy to attach. It’s now on his dresser and we turn it on at bedtime.

My daughter, who is 4, asked Santa for vanilla-strawberry toothpaste among other things. “Santa” wasn’t able to find that exact combo, but Hello’s Magical Mermaid toothpaste, with an Orange Dreamsicle flavor, has proven to be a viable swap — she’s been voluntarily brushing multiple times a day, also using her newunicorn electric toothbrush.

Another explicit ask: “A spray bottle that’s for kids, not for dolls.” This one is probably meant for adults rather than kids, but it’s easy for her to operate (she also has a very small one that requires adult levels of hand strength to use) and has become another everyday tool, mostly for wetting her hair and occasionally scaring the dog.

My 8-year-old received this 3-D pen from a family member. It works a little like a hot-glue gun, melting the plastic wire so you can create different things with it. It’s been keeping her busy as she comes up with new creations.

She also loved this mini karaoke machine that she was able to hook up to her iPad so she can sing along with lyrics to her favorite songs. We’ve been watching many performances since Christmas morning.

My 12-year-old got a vanity for her big present from us and picked out this one from Amazon. She’s my most organized child, so the extra drawers and shelves are great for her to store all her hair tools and skin care. She also received theTYMO CurlPro Curling Wand, which is goofproof to use. The rotating wand beeps when hair is curled, and she’s been using it before school most days.

My 15-year-old wanted the Rhode Glazing Milk. I have to say, when she uses it her skin looks even more glowy and dewy than usual.

She also loved this delicate gold necklace from Baublebar that makes it easy to pull off a layered look.

Inspired by the people who collect rubber ducks on the dashboards of their Jeeps, my kids have gotten kind of obsessed with ducks over the past year. So I was primed to impulse buy this board game when I started seeing Instagram ads for it in the final week before Christmas. It’s pretty much exactly what it says on the tin — a “weirdly strategic duck-kidnapping game” that involves randomly pulling colorful plastic waterfowl out of a UFO-shaped hopper and using goofy prompts to arrange them into a specific array. Turns out it’s really fun and our whole family loves the logic-puzzle aspect of it. (It’s billed “for grownups and smart kids ages 12 and up,” but myKanoodle-loving 7-year-old can hang with occasional hints and some extra time to think.)

I’d never heard of this game until my sister’s family gifted it to my husband, and our two families had so much fun playing that she bought another copy for her own household. It’s kind of a dexterity game more than anything else — you hold five specific trinkets in one hand, then race to be the first to drop a particular combination of them as shown on each card. Every time you win a round, you add a tiny bell to the mix of objects in your hand, which makes future rounds harder because the bells get in the way as you try to drop only, say, the red cube and the purple ring without letting go of anything else. It’s a fine-motor-skills workout and a surprisingly good time.

My3-year-oldand5-year-oldnieces received this really cool magnetic building toy that comes with rechargeable monorail cars to zip around its endlessly reconfigurable tracks. It’s definitely a crowd-pleaser that appeals to kids of various ages and is fun for adults to play with, too.

The teens may bemore into Jellycats, but the younger kids still love Labubus. My dad went a little wild and gifted my daughters and nieces a variety ofBig Into EnergyandPin for Loveblind boxes, and they have been taking them everywhere and playing with them like dolls. My7-year-oldalso got someclothingfor her Labubusand has been having a lot of fun dressing them up.

This one’s not technically a kid gift, but my husband and my brother-in-law went all out and split the cost of LEGO’s first-everStar Trekset as a gift for my father-in-law and it went over so well that I couldn’t not include it here (LEGO pitches itself as made for kids from ages 3 to 99, after all). Watching him open it was the stuff that heartwarming viral videos are made of, and the family group text has been alight with progress photos ever since.

My 3-year-old son also got a flexible car track for Christmas. He’s basically been obsessed with vehicles since birth, but I have held off buying ramps and tracks because they are all so big. My mom and I had been discussing the proliferation of this kind of car track, specifically the 15-footers like Winnie’s, above, and she cleverly found this less-expensive set that comes with a car and two supports for a loop and a jump. I also like that the fastener at the top is a screw vice rather than a set of suction cups. All of the adults happily took turns playing with it alongside my son, who was utterly delighted.

His other gift from my parents (which he thinks came from Santa) was this 1/24 scale Dodge Ram pickup truck with doors that open and a cargo bed that conveniently fits one Hot Wheels or Matchbox car. He has bragged about it to his friends and neighbors, taken it into the bathtub, driven it over piles of Play-Doh, held it as he slept in his car seat, and even used it as a trick landing pad for cars flying off his new ramp. My parents placed it unwrapped under the tree so it was the first thing he saw on Christmas morning, a genius move that has increased its lore — “It just showed up!” — and therefore its appeal.

I bought these on a whim as a last-minute stocking stuffer, and he’s been using them with acoloring pad from Melissa & Dougand narrating his results as he layers and mixes the colors. The texture is super-satisfying, somewhere between normal crayons and tempera paint sticks. And they twist up to reveal more crayon, too.