the best gifts for 5- to 8-year-olds
Playtime prowess: Navigating the toy aisle for your 5- to 8-year-olds
Welcome to the delightful world of kindergarteners and ‘big kids’ – where imagination runs wild, and playtime is serious business!
Choosing the right toys for your little one can be overwhelming, but also a joyous adventure, and I’m here to guide you through the whimsical wonderland of playthings.
The power of pretend play
Unleash your child’s creativity with toys that ignite their imagination. From dress-up costumes to miniature kitchen sets, these toys are the keys to unlocking fantastical worlds where your kindergartener can be a superhero, chef, or even an astronaut!
Educational extravaganza
Who says learning can’t be fun? Opt for toys that sneakily teach important skills. Think building blocks, puzzles, and board games that make counting, sorting, and problem-solving a playful affair. Your little one will be having so much fun; they won’t even realize they’re learning!
Outdoor adventures
Don’t forget the great outdoors! Encourage active play with toys that get them moving. Whether it’s a colorful kite, a bouncy ball, or a set of sidewalk chalk, these outdoor treasures keep the energy flowing and foster a love for fresh air.
Friendship forged in toyland
Social skills are just as crucial as ABCs and 123s. Choose toys that encourage group play and sharing. Board games, playsets, and interactive toys that involve cooperation are perfect for building those early friendships and teamwork skills.
Durability, the unsung hero
Kindergarteners are like tiny tornadoes, leaving a trail of fun in their wake. Look for toys made from sturdy materials that can withstand the enthusiastic play of your little whirlwind. Bonus points if they’re easy to clean – because, let’s face it, messes are all part of the fun.
Musical mayhem
Foster a love for melody with musical toys. From tambourines to mini keyboards, these instruments let your kindergartener explore the magic of music.
Timeless classics
Some toys never go out of style. Classics like building blocks, dolls, and toy cars have stood the test of time for a reason. They’re not only timeless but also versatile, allowing for endless possibilities of play.
In the enchanting realm of kindergartener toys, the key is to balance education with entertainment and foster a love for play that will last a lifetime.
So, after this toy-tastic guide, check out a couple of our favorites and let the playtime adventures begin!
We just gifted this LEGO set and it was a big hit!
The kinetic sculptures, or automata, are mechanically engineered toys that move when you crank the handle on the side. Each model includes a papercraft character that you fold and link with LEGO elements.
It’s a great STEM toy and so much fun!
LeapFrog Magic Adventures Globe
This world globe is perfect for your curious adventurer.
It lets you hear thousands of facts, interact with games, and explore cultures, animals and habitats with amazing BBC videos to visually experience Earth.
Engino – Mechanics Pulley Drives STEM Toy
This amazing STEM toy is designed for kids 9 and older. We’ve gifted it twice lately and it was the biggest hit!
I’ve always loved building toys as a kid and was lucky enough to play along a little bit. The instructions are easy to follow and it offers some theory, facts and fun experiments.
GiiKER Super Blocks Pattern matching puzzle game
The goal of this game is to place the appropriate colored pieces to cover the lighted areas. It’s for kids 6 and older, which I think is appropriate, because it can get tricky to find the right spots for your pieces.
It’s a great brain teaser and perfect for travel!
Melissa & Doug Suspend Family Game
This is a super fun balancing game for the whole family! And great to practice hand eye coordination!
This version is for kids 8+.
But they also have the junior version here.
Aquabeads are an amazing craft for kids 4 years and older.
Instead or ironing them together like perler beads you just have to spray them with water and the beads will stick together when they are dry.
We’ve done quite a few sets and loved all of them!
Of course you can also get the beads and make your own designs and creations.
ThinkFun gravity maze marble run brain game
This is a great game I’ve gifted several times already.
Gravity Maze is a combination of logic game, marble run and STEM toy best suited for kids age 8 and up. It contains 60 challenges from beginner to expert and is super fun to play.
It’s easy to learn with a clear instruction manual so your big kid can start playing and solving right away.
This game is a classic and so much fun!
It’s pretty simple, you have to “Bop It, Twist It, Pull It”.
Players can face-off in a multiplayer game with the pass and play feature or beat their best in solo mode.
It’s officially 8+, but depending on your kid, 6 or 7 is old enough to have fun with this!
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC kids fort building kit
What’s more fun than building your own fort?
And National Geographic takes fort building to thrilling new levels with this 225-piece building kit! You can easily build indoor forts with endless configurations. Tents, castles, and even dome-shaped forts! It’s a great STEM building toy that combines creativity, pretend play and science.
I loved my audio cassettes when I was a kid (yes, I’m that old) and would fall asleep listening to stories!
The Toniebox is an audio player for even the smallest listeners that is great for bedtime stories, music, and education.
From Disney to Sesame Street to Paw Patrol, I’m sure you can find your kid’s favorites. Or you can record your own songs and messages on a Creative Tonie to play whenever you like. The Tonies, the little figures are part of the fun and get played with just as much as the Toniebox itself.
The Toniebox is very intuitive. My daughter was 2 when we got ours and she had it figured out in no time. It’s also basically indestructible, so you definitely don’t have to worry about it, when your little one carries the box around and drops it.
It has up to 7 hours of battery life and you only need wifi for the initial setup.
It’s actually a German product and has been a beloved part of European children’s rooms longer than here in the States. There are thousands of German Tonies and I think we won’t be far behind in the US market soon.
Our Toniebox travels with us wherever we go and I highly recommend it!
Another great option is the Yoto Mini. This is a kids bluetooth audio player for stories, music, podcasts, radio, white noise and ok-to-wake alarm clock. It can be used as speaker or with headphones and this mini version is ideal for on-the-go listening. What’s great about the Yoto is the longevity of the device, from playing white noise for newborns, to educational activities for when they become toddlers, to classic children’s novels or cool podcasts for when they’re older. You can also get a Make Your Own card and read your own stories to your little one.
If you’re looking for an older kid I would actually recommend this audio player.
Magnetic tiles are another example of a great open-ended toy!
They encourage creativity!
This great 130piece magnetic construction tile kit gives children hours of fun and helps develop their color and shape recognition, creativity and imagination, hands-on skills, design skills, social skills and thinking skills.
It’s fun, it’s colorful, a definite must have!
MAGBLOCK magnetic tiles marble run
I love magnetic tiles and I love a good marble run!
This big 176piece set is both.
It’s a great STEM learning toy and can help your big kid develop skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
And if you’re lucky you’ll get a turn too.
Little Live Pets mama surprise
This soft, interactive guinea pig and her 3 Babies are a big hit with my daughter and her friends
You nurture your mama by patting, feeding and brushing her to make her heart light up. Then place her back in the hutch and wait for the babies to be magically revealed.
Melissa & Doug wooden scoop and serve ice cream counter
We love ice cream and we love this play set!
This is another one of Melissa & Doug’s beautiful and creative pretend play sets!
Let your little one scoop up some cool treats and serve you the best ice cream of the neighborhood. With 28-pieces the set comes with a sturdy wooden tabletop counter, eight wooden scoops of different-flavored ice cream, six assorted toppings, two cones, a plastic cup, an ice cream scooper, tongs, and a wooden spoon. The reusable menu card is great for children to interact with their friends in a playful social environment.
National Geographic crystal growing kit
Have you ever grown your own crystals? It’s so fascinating.
And with this set it’s fast (only 3-4 days), easy, colorful and fun!
National Geographic has amazing hands-on science toys that are always a great gift.
This is another great toy from BRIO.
Officially it’s 3+, personally I think 4 at the earliest or 5 is a better age for it. Then your budding engineer can build awesome vehicles and robots with this set. It provides a fun way to practice creative experimentation and improve hand-eye coordination.
This is one of two of my daughter’s favorite dolls.
Baby Emma (in our house) is an adorable 17 inch, soft-bodied baby doll with very lifelike features. She gets cuddled and taken care of, just like a real baby and we actually got her some regular baby clothes. She comes with all the right accessories, opens and closes her eyes, can cry and wet the diaper.
It’s also the doll our friends play the most with when visiting.
This is the other of our two favorite dolls.
The 12 inch doll is realistic looking, cuddly and super cute and the accessories are everyone’s favorite. Best of all is the carrier slash car seat, that let’s baby Annasandra (I didn’t come up with that name) come on many adventures!
Crayola Globbles sticky fidget balls
Sticky balls anyone? These are so fun for kids and relaxing for adults.
They’re not messy and never leave a residue behind, even after being thrown at walls and windows. And if your kids want to take them outside that’s fine too. They easily restore their sticky power after being washed with soap and water.
Melissa & Doug double-sided tabletop easel
Do you have a little artist at home?
Inspire endless creativity with this double-sided tabletop easel!
It has a magnetic dry-erase board on one side (which is what we use the most), a chalkboard on the other and it includes a paper-roll holder with a paper guide and tear-bar for a 12-inch paper roll that adds even more ways to create masterpieces!
I prefer the tabletop easel compared to the freestanding easels, because it’s so easy to carry around. We take it outside, my daughter brings it to her room or the living room and now we use it on the dining table to help with homework.
This is a fun brain teaser puzzle for your kindergartener or older preschooler.
You build a route in the bottom plate and if you link the path from start to finish, the car will transport the marble ball to the end smoothly. It’s good for training logical thinking, focus and observation and to learn about cause and effect.
Kids love playing doctor and this 31piece kit has everything your little one needs!
Pretend play is fun and so important for a child’s development. Plus, if you have a doctor’s visit coming up, it’s a great way to help children understand the medical treatment and different tools and relieve their anxiety and fear of visiting a doctor!
This set is super durable and if you don’t believe me, I have a couple of teacher friends who have this in their classroom.
I had forgotten about this game until I saw it at a friend’s house recently. The BRIO labyrinth has been around since 1946 and is very common in Europe. It was so much fun to play it again and I might have enjoyed it even more than my daughter.
It’s the perfect game for developing motor skills, concentration, perception, reasoning and most of all, patience!
Playing with kinetic sand is one of our favorite things to do to relax and calm down. It’s endless creativity for a sensory adventure.
It’s relatively mess free and easy to clean up and store.
A big batch of play-doh is always a hit!
It sparks creativity, offers sensory stimulation and is just fun!
We have some favorite sets with molds and cutters etc. too, but this is already going to be a looong list of favorites, so I’ll keep it simple and just tell you to get lots and lots of colors of play-doh.
Do you remember these geometric shape puzzles from when you were a kid? They’ve been popular for decades for a reason.
The tangram wooden puzzles stimulate imagination and creativity and are a great educational tool for children.
This is a big set with over 200 wooden pieces to build the biggest pattern, flower, animal or vehicle you can think of.
If your kid is stealing your purses and makeup, have a look at this:
This vibrant and adorable pretend makeup and purse set comes with everything your little one could ever want and is dearly beloved in our toy collection.
Another must have for those dress-up box adventures is a good pirate costume!
We love this one! My daughter for all the cool accessories and I love it because it works for boys and girls alike and your little one won’t grow out of it for a long time.
I’ve yet to meet a little girl that doesn’t love Elsa. So here we go with the ultimate Disguise Frozen snow queen Elsa deluxe costume!
Sometimes I wish we had two of these, because it’s everyone’s favorite in our dress-up box. But with only one they just have to learn to take turns.
Snap Circuits Beginner electronics exploration kit
A safe and fun way to introduce children ages 5-9 to electrical engineering!
Your little one can learn the basics of how switches and circuits work and build problem-solving, troubleshooting, and planning skills.
So far we’ve only tried this one, since most Snap Circuit kits are for older kids. But this one was definitely fun!
Barbie Skipper Babysitters Inc
I have a huge Barbie fan at home! Barbie is our independent play go to.
And this playset is one of our favorites! The Nap ‘N Nurture Nursery is perfect for little mamas and comes with more than 10 accessories.
Another favorite of my Barbie loving girl is this cool pizza set!
It comes with the dough in the perfect colors to make delicious chees pizza. We had hours of fun with this set, with lots of deliveries and restaurant visits.
KidKraft Charlotte classic wooden dollhouse
Every kid’s dream and at this stage in my girl’s life the by far most played with toy!
Standing over four feet tall with four levels and plenty of room for the 12″ dolls (Barbies in our case), this beautiful wooden dollhouse offers lots of space so multiple kids can explore and play at the same time.
Spark big, imaginative dreams and create exciting stories! KidKraft dollhouses are amazing quality and the assembly is really not too difficult.
I love toys you can take outside!
While a bug jar with magnifying glass was perfect for your preschooler, your big kid is ready for a real microscope to explore the world!
This pocket microscope is small and sturdy, with a powerful 60x-120x magnification range.
Bluey Heeler family figures and 4WD vehicle pack
We are huge Bluey fans! It’s one of the few kids shows that I actually enjoy watching too and make sure not to miss any new episodes. So it should come as no surprise that we have a couple of Bluey toys too.
This set comes with the whole family and their car.
We got it together with this:
Bluey Caravan Adventure Playset
This is such a fun caravan playset!
The toys are great quality and I love all the accessories and details. Together with the car and the family figures, the Heeler family is ready to embark on amazing adventures!
Hape wooden quadrilla marble run
And another marble run. If you haven’t figured it out yet, we love those! And this one is amazing!
It’s recommended 4 years+ and fun for the whole family. Marble runs are awesome STEAM toys that will encourage children’s spatial thinking, problem solving capabilities and team work skills.
I love Hape toys. They’re well thought through, high quality and safe. And I’m not only saying this because it’s a German brand and I’m German. These are toys you pass down for generations.
Watercolors are amazing for kids to let their imagination and creativity run wild!
This travel watercolor set gives you the ability to paint with watercolor paint at home or on the go. It has everything you need, from 48 colors to the brush and the paper.
Bring watercolors to the beach or the park and let your little ones paint colorful shell or rocks and leaves.
Learning Resources three bear family counters
Our bears have been on a lot of adventures and make learning fun! They’re also regulars in our sensory bins.
These plastic bears come in three sizes, three weights and six colors and there are a million ways you can use them. Counting, sorting, color recognition, imaginative play…
These blocks are amazing!
KEVA planks are high precision blocks that stack with surprising stability. The goal is to try to build the image on the challenge card (2D to #D) and practice your spatial thinking.
But honestly, they’re fun for every age. Toddlers, children, teenagers and adults can all build at their own ability level. From a simple house to a complex bridge, there are endless possibilities. And if you like them, there are lots great sets to build contraptions like catapults and bot mazes.
These stepping stones deserve their spot on our all-time favorite list! They’re great for balancing, imaginative play, they’re colorful and fun!
The portable river stones with non-slip rubber edging are great for indoor and outdoor exercising and come in 4 varying sizes. Build bridges over hot lava or set up an obstacle course. Kids for sure will find a creative way to use these.
Charades is my daughter’s favorite game to play!
This set comes in a snap box which is great for traveling and the best part is it has different difficulty levels. I love the colorful design with the large icons making it easy for non-readers to join in the laughter while also offering levels that are still challenging enough for older players.
Charades is such a silly fun game for the whole family or even big groups of kids.
Who doesn’t love the magic of seeing a kite soar through the sky? This one is a great kite for kids aged 3 and up! It’s colorful, it’s easy to get up in the air and to fly and it assembles quickly.
LEGO Classic Creative Brick Box
Here come the big kid LEGOs!
Same as with the LEGO Duplos I recommend starting with the simple bricks and the base plate. They fuel the imagination and encourage open-ended play.
But this really is where the LEGO fun begins! Once you reach the LEGO Classic age there are endless possibilities for boys and girls alike. Castles, dinosaurs, airplanes… you name it, LEGO will have a set for it.
Every kid needs a big stuffy! If it’s not so big that you’re wondering where you’re going to put it, it’s not big enough.
This beautiful big (over 5 feet!) tiger is the beloved companion of one of my daughter’s best friends.
Squishmallows Pokemon Piplup plush
And don’t forget the Squishmallows!
This big fellow is one of my daughter’s favorites. And it’s so cuddly and comfy to lay on while we’re reading our bedtime stories.
Doctor Jupiter my first science experiment kit
Science can be so much fun for little explorers with curious minds!
Help your kids foster an early love for science with this cool kit with more than 50 experiments, which will spark their interest, captivate their minds and encourage them to become problem solvers.
We’ve done a lot of the experiments already and really enjoyed them. The kit comes with almost everything you need and the rest you’ll have at home.
hand2mind Indoor scooter board
I was looking for something to replace or old tricycle and VTech motorbike, since most kids that play with it in our house were really getting too big. These scooter boards with safety handles are a blast! And with a weight limit of 175lbs you might be able to have some fun with it too. It’s actually pretty good exercise.
This is one of our favorite games.
Oodles of noodles and oodles of fun!
This is an easy game for kids 3-4+. You lay out the noodles over the bowl with the Yeti on top. Them, remove the strands of noodles from the bowl, but don’t let the yeti fall! That’s it and that’s all you need for some fun family game time.
DISCLAIMER: As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Read the full disclosure policy here.
all about play
Playing is your kids most important job!
Learn why and see how we like to play in these posts.
activities & inspiration
Let's get hands on!
Kids will love the crafts, games, sensory play ideas and more that you will find here.
favorite toys
Toys are the tools to unlock your child's imagination!
Find out about our favorite toys and why we love them.