Best presents for a 7 year old girl

Empowering Toys for Girls

Toys have a significant and lasting impact on the ways children learn to view themselves and their place in the world. While our parents may have grown up with toys that promoted more traditional gender roles, today's generation of girls has access to products that aim to empower them.

The rise of a new generation of pro-girl toys are challenging the archaic gender roles they espouse and changing ideas about how girls play. Proving that the female population can accomplish anything it sets its mind to, these toys for girls include  STEM kits, construction sets and dolls. 

Thames and Kosmos Pepper Mint Great Treehouse Adventure

In this story-based STEM kit, Pepper Mint visits her aunt who is a scientist researching primates. She lives in a treehouse in the rainforest on the island of Borneo. The treehouse is not connected to the electrical power grid, but Pepper Mint and her aunt devise mechanical inventions to accomplish various tasks.

Top toys for 13 year old boys

Best travel toys for older boys

Baffle

Baffle Game is mind bending plastic puzzle based on twist and slide of 'Smarties style' buttons. Mess it up then try to get the orderly rows of bright shiny buttons back. Baffle is a lovely tactile, easily portable and great for travel.

What we're loving: Moonlite

Moonlite is a cute, easy-to-use device that turns your smartphone (most Android and iOS devices) into a storybook projector. Moonlite clips onto your smartphone and uses the phone’s torch light to project vibrant storybook illustrations onto any surface. The free Moonlite companion app contains all of the words to the stories to help you read along while projecting the storybook images. The Moonlite app also includes sound effects to make story time even more magical. Packaged just like a storybook, Moonlite slides right onto your bookshelf and comes with two delightful stories. A great idea to ignite the love of reading and develop your child's imagination.

10 presents for future fashion designers

Creativity For Kids Fashion Headbands

Gorgeous creative kit to decorate and personalise 10 rainbow satin headbands with beautiful accessories. Everything included to make a fashion statement; 11 plain and patterned ribbons; 2 fabric flowers; sparkly butterfly; decorative “jewels”; colourful spotty feathers; glue pen and inspirational instruction and ideas leaflet. A fabulous fashion idea for children of all ages!

5 cooperative board games to avoid arguments this Christmas

Alongside excessive boozing, dozing grandparents and leftover turkey sandwiches, the board game is a Christmas staple. Sadly so is a flipped Monopoly board. Some folks just can’t stand losing. Good news. There’s an alternative (apart from just going down the pub and leaving them to it). You can still enjoy some family board game bonding, without your festive day degenerating into scattered Monopoly money, broken furniture and lower lip wobbles. Yes, there is such a thing as working together to beat the game. And it can be just as fun. Here's our pick of the best cooperative games to play this Christmas.

We Detectives

Serious sleuthing for serious enjoyment! Work together to solve crimes and don’t let the bad guy walk. Each player is a detective and they must work together as a team to uncover the evidence and lock the baddie up for good! Watch out though – hazards and unforeseen events will make your job harder!  For 2 – 4 players.

Age 7+

The best radio control cars

Stunt Racer 360

It lights, it spins, it preforms amazing tricks! This RC Stunt Racer performs truly impressive spinning tricks and the wheels and other parts of the car's body light up to provide a dizzying light-show as it spins and flips. 19cm wide.

Age 6+

10 presents for creative girls

Lite @ Nite String Art

Use a mix of traditional string art skills and stencilling, add fairy lights and you have a shining masterpiece!  Insert the pins into the butterfly outline template onto the pre-cut wood.  A delightful craft activity that will leave girls with a real sense of achievement when the project is finished!  Download the app for extra content. 

Stocking fillers for 2 year old boys

Top science kits for girls

Science4You Soap Factory

Understand why soap is so important for our skin and get to know the complete process of producing soaps. Aside its cleansing functions, soaps also have funny shapes, many colours and pleasant scents, and children will be able to create some with all these features by using plastic moulds, dyes, apple or tangerine scents and all the lab materials needed to carry out their experiments. The kit includes a 36 pages educational booklet with 8 experiments and much more. 

10 family games to play this Christmas

Mexican Train 

This truly fun and addictive game is like Dominoes, but with a little extra bit on the side. The aim of the game is to get rid of all your dominoes faster than any other player, but with 91 tiles in one set you better make sure you don’t block your own train!

This easy to follow game is great fun for all the family, young and old. The set contains everything you need to get started – 91 domino tiles, 8 train markers, 1 train station hub and a simple manual. 

Best escape games

Escape room games began as digital adventures and quickly turned into real-life events all around the world where players are locked in a room and must uncover clues and hidden objects to escape. Escape room games have become insanely popular in the past few years, with numerous businesses popping up in all cities. But for those who might not have one easily accessible or don’t want to shell out the money for one; there’s another fantastic option….. Escape Games. These can be played from the comfort of your own living room and are a great idea for some collaborative fun with the family over Christmas. Here’s a few of the best products available:

Escape The Room - Secret of Dr Gravely’s Retreat

The year is 1913 and you are the lucky winner of a free stay at Foxcrest Retreat, where the famed Dr. Gravely has improved upon the latest in spa treatments and relaxation for those of high social standing. You take a long all-expense-paid train ride to the retreat. Upon your arrival, however, you and your fellow guests may find the "health retreat" is not what it seems...The Objective: Work with your guests to discover the dark secret of Dr. Gravely's retreat by finding clues and solving puzzles. But be careful…in the story, the doors have shut and locked behind you. Will you and your guests discover the secret and escape the room before time runs out?

Age 13+

Top electrical toys

From series and parallel circuits to  more complex sensor-triggered electricity kits, we have a fabulous selection for any child interested in how things work. Many are used in schools, linked to the National Curriculum and all selected for their learning fun.

Logiblocs Electric City

Logiblocs is back to support the coding and logic work now in the curriculum. The push-fit plug and play blocks encourage the systematic thought needed to create circuits and more hi-tech sensor, NOT, OR, and AND gate-controlled systems. We love the instruction manuals packed with project ideas. 

Age 7-12

The best art and craft toys for boys

 4M Mould and Paint Glow in the Dark Dinosaurs 

Create 6 awesome dinosaurs and mould and paint them into ferocious glow in the dark fridge magnets or badges. Includes reusable moulds, easy-to-dry plaster powder (enough to make 12 beasts), 6 coloured paints, glow tub, magnets, pins, brush and detailed instructions. Age 5-11

Our pick of the best engineering toys

Do you have a child in your life who loves tinkering and building? Engineering toys develop so many important learning skills and behaviours, including  problem solving skills, analytical and critical thinking skills, creativity, intellectual curiosity, flexibility and perseverance – all while your child plays! And these STEM toys are not just for little kids – there are ideas for preschoolers through to teenagers. 

The Amazing Clock Kit

This is a discovery kit with a difference. Both sides of the wind-up clock are transparent, meaning that the workings of the clock are completely visible. So rather than being a tool to help children learn how to tell the time, this is designed to give them an understanding of how a clock actually works. They will be able to see how the swinging pendulum causes the different cogs and springs to rotate, move, turn the hands of the clock and make the bell chime too - all in only 13 steps. Once fully wound the Clock Kit should run for around 6 hours.

 Age 5-11

Best puzzles and thinking games for young children

ThinkFun Laser Maze Junior

Pick a challenge card and place the tokens on the board to manipulate the beam and direct it towards the target.

Age 6+

What we're loving right now

Paint by Sticker Kids

Move over, colouring books. Paint by Sticker Kids  includes everything you need to create 10 bright, playful, full colour illustrations. The book contains templates printed on perforated card stock, and 10 pages of stickers to fill in and create the artwork. The fun, vibrant images are rendered in "low-poly", a computer graphics style using geometric polygon shapes to create a 3-D effect. As in paint by number, each template is divided into hundreds of spaces, each with a number that corresponds to a particular sticker. Find the sticker, peel it, and place it in the right space. Add the next, and the next, and the next, and voila! Kids will love watching these pictures come to life. 

Creepy toys for a spooktacular Halloween

ZOOB BuilderZ Creepy Glow Creatures

ZOOB is not like any other building set – the pieces include gears, axles and joints that snap, click, and pop together! With rotating, spinning and extendable parts you can actually design a toy to play with, instead of just building something to look at. ZOOB BuilderZ Creepy Glow Creatures hang and glow and stick to your wall! With 58 especially gloomy coloured ZOOB pieces, plus 2 glow-in-the-dark ZOOB’s, and instructions to build spiders, scorpions, crabs or more, you have everything you need to turn your home into a house of horrors!

Age 6+

Top toys for horse-mad children

If you know a horse-mad youngster, check out our range of equestrian-themed present ideas. From playsets to art sets, we've got it all covered! 

Melissa and Doug Puffy Sticker Activity Book - Riding Club

This 10-page puffy sticker activity book lets kids jump right into an equestrian world. With 139 reusable stickers and different scenes on each page, this spiral-bound play set invites kids to dress the riders, saddle the horses, and move the characters from page to page to visit a pasture, stable, horse show, and more.

The 10 best presents for children who love learning about the past

Bring the past alive with our round-up of the 10 best history toys and present ideas for children of all ages.

Keycraft Egyptian Mummy Archaeology Kit 

There is so much to do in this fascinating kit. Excavate the sarcophagus from the block of plaster using special tools. As the sarcophagus is very old it will need to be dusted and repainted and the mummy contained within will need to be "bandaged" as a mummy. Set contain earthen block containing sarcophagus and figure, digging tool and hammer, dusting brush, roll of paper bandage, paints, brush and a fact booklet. 

What's on her Christmas list this year?

AniMagic Waggles My Wiggling Walking Pup

Waggles a wiggling, waggling, walking sausage dog! He walks just like a real sausage dog, wiggling his bum and waggling his tail as he trots along happily. He has a cheeky smile and cute puppy barking sound effects.

Our pick of the best maths toys

Ice Cubed 

Correctly position up to five colour-coded ice cubes in a tower so the numbers on the outer faces add up to those on the footer card. Contains 48 progressively harder challenges. 1 or more players.

Present ideas for 6 year old boy

Don't know what to buy him this year? Take a look at some of our suggestions:

Read this before you buy Power Dough

We just LOVE dough, it’s a great toy for spending some focussed time with you young one – creative, imaginative and a toy that really engrosses children in play. We also love a little bit of added extra when it comes to toys and so we were excited when Power Dough was launched.

Is there a doctor in the house? Our top toys for budding medics

Bigjigs Doctors Set

This 9-piece wooden toy doctor’s kit has everything needed to nurse poorly teddies and dolls back to health, and there’s also a case to store it in! Six pieces of wooden medical equipment, including syringe, thermometer, stethoscope, reflex hammer, otoscope, medicine cream pump, fabric apron, bandage and wooden clipboard with notes. 

Top 10 coding toys

Encouraging early programming skills will develop critical thinking and problem solving in young learners.

Here’s our selection of the 10 best coding toys around at the moment.

Code Gamer Kit 

Learn how to code with the Code Gamer Kit by playing a video game! Use sensors to control the game with this innovative gamepad, solve puzzles and challenges to learn the Arduino programming language and write your own programs and develop new applications for the sensors. The Code Gamer Kit requires a tablet or smartphone running iOS or Android. 

Age 10+

Top 10 Role Play Toys

Role play is an important part of child development, as it builds confidence, creativity communication, physical development and problem solving. Along with being a fun activity, it also allows children to get into character and act out real liferoles or fictional performances. Take a look at some of the best toys for encouraging roll play. 

ELC Medical Case

Little doctors in training will love the medical case, filled with lots of toy medical tools: perfect for nursing sick teddies and poorly dolls back to health. When playtime is over, all of the equipment packs neatly away into the carry case, which is also great for taking with for on the go fun. The medical case is perfect for role playing and make believe: with lots of detailed accessories to make play even more realistic, your little one will love creating lots of stories about their own medical ward. It's also ideal for playing with friends and family, which helps boost social and communication skills. Includes, case, stethoscope, blood pressure monitor, bandage, powder shaker, tweezers, thermometer, doctors hammer, otoscope, syringe and name badge.

Top 10 Magic Sets

Magic sets great for hand-eye co-ordination, dexterity, building confidence and presentation skills. From the age of 6 onwards is a ideal time for a child to begin learning magic tricks. It's important that you select a magic set that's right for your child. We recommend that you open it with your child, and both pick one trick that looks fun and begin to learn it together. Once you have a few magic tricks mastered, you can tell the whole family that you are both putting on a magic show.  Allow the child to be the magician and you can be his or her helper. It's great fun and makes fantastic memories.

Here's our pick of the 10 best magic sets for all ages.

Science4You The Science of Magic

Burst a balloon without touching it or fill it up without blowing. Create a magic dough that can be solid or liquid and use your magic wand to make astounding magic tricks. There are 28 activities and the set includes a 36 page educational book. For ages 8 and above.

5 construction toys your child needs in their life

There is a reason why kids love construction toys so much. It’s not about the form, purpose or function of the toy. It’s about all those endless possibilities kids can truly build with their own imagination, and there is no place more colorful, interesting, amazing and fascinating than a kid’s mind. So, inspire them with this selection awesome construction toys.

GiGi Bloks

Are you the parent of a Hatchimals fan?

If you're the parent of a Hatchimals fan, brace yourself: on October 5, the super-popular line is launching an addition that's sure to be at the top of many a holiday list this year: HatchiBabies.

What we're loving right now: vTech Switch & Go

VTech Switch and Go

We like the idea of these 2-in-1 dinosaur/vehicle toys for children aged between 3 and 6. They come as a vehicle and within a few steps, the vehicle easily changes into a lively dinosaur. The toy plays sound effects as it's pushed along and when transforming. There are also action buttons to which play additional sound effects and educational dinosaur facts.

Present ideas for 5 year old girls

Can't work out what to get her this year? Take a look at some of our suggestions:

Best toys for budding vets

Inspire a new generation of vets and veterinary nurses with these fantastic toys.

Melissa and Doug vet play set

Everything animal lovers need for happy and healthy pets, including a cute plush cat and dog to examine and treat.  The 24 piece set also includes:

Best games for young children - part 2

We're Going on a Bear Hunt

It's time to go hunting for bears in this fantastic board game based on the best selling children's book We're Going on a Bear Hunt. Squelch through the mud and "swishy swashy" through the grass until you find the bear's cave. . . Then run home as fast as you can; first one back wins!

Best games for young children - part 1

Bigjigs Animal Shut the Box

A beautifully illustrated wooden game, based on Shut the Box.  Be the first to flip down all of your animals to be crowned the winner.

Race your opponent to spin and land on each animal character, flipping them up as you play.  No loose pieces make this a great game to take travelling too!

1 player games

Here are some of our favourite games for just one player. They're perfect for some alone time or when there's just nobody else around.

Itop

A fidget spin-to-win masterpiece game to challenge yourself or your friends! The pocket-sized electronic spinning top counts the number of revolutions and keeps track of scores - can you beat the highest score? With 3 main play modes including – Top Score, 99 Spin Challenge and a Compass mode. The clever i-Top also comes with unlockable play modes – spin the secret combinations to see special animations appear. It's simple to do but will take practice to master. Available in purple, green and blue colourways.

Present ideas for 5 year old boy

What would a five year old boy want for Christmas this year? Take a look at some of the possible answers:

Our favourite new board games - part 1

Don't dust off the old board games this winter. Get a new one. Here are some of the latest releases which have caught our eyes:

Downfall

Our favourite robot toys 2018

As you know from decades of watching sci-fi movies, robots come in two metallic flavours: Helpful manservants that speak with an affected British accent or psychotic murder machines sent back from the future. But there are booming new categories that are going to benefit your child: educational robots for kids, robot toys for kids, and coding robots. If you’re looking to start the robot revolution in your own home, here are some consumer models that are programmed to be cool.

Meccano M.A.X.

Construct M.A.X. from scratch using 332 pieces, and once he’s built, children can interact with him in really cool ways. 

Unlike past Meccano builds, M.A.X.’s building time is cut in half, and will take kids between one to three hours to build. The included booklet features clear, step-by-step instructions with detailed photos and diagrams for a seamless assembly. The box also comes with Meccano’s signature screwdriver and wrench, so no outside tools are necessary. M.A.X. uses advanced technology to combine artificial intelligence with robotics, so each robot will be personalized to each kid based on how they interact and play with him. 

Present ideas for a 1st birthday or Christmas

Children at 12 months old are naturally curious and need lots of bold bright toys to keep them active and stimulated. Here are some of our favourite gift ideas for that milestone first birthday or Christmas.

Present ideas for 10 year old girls

A ten year old girl can be hard to shop for, she’s ready to take the world head on but still holds on to her inner child. We have compiled a list of gifts for 10 year old girls that will help you choose just the right thing for her.