Childminders - what do you want from your mindees?

[MsTea]

I'm having my annual shopping trip to town later this week so I'm looking for ideas for our childminders. I'm new to this - this is our first Christmas with them (husband and wife team) - so I'm wondering what childminders actually want from their kids? My default will be wine and chocolates (always goes down well in this house!), but if anyone has something slightly more interesting, I'd be very happy to hear it.

Thanks in advance.

We used a childminder for ds1 from 9mths til he went to school at 4 and we got them (husband and wife team) a large m&s panetonne one year, chocs and wine another, handbags set for her and joules notebook for him another time it was more a token gift from the little one.

I was going to bake a big chocolate cake and ice THANK YOU on it and hand it over at the beginning of the last pre Xmas week

Cinema vouchers are nice gift for childminders

Some good ideas here, thanks. Maybe I'll do some food for the whole family then some vouchers so they can do something on their own. Thanks for the help.

I always appreciate something for my DD, she's the one sharing her home with loads of kids.

I did see a brilliant wine label with a photo of a child and the caption 'I'm the reason you need this' which made me laugh.

Ha, I saw the wine thing too on FB... Saved the pic as it was brilliant. I used leftover halloween candy and pocket money type of toys (usually from Aliexpress or from sales previous year) and put them into special xmas themed boxes for little treats for her kids. Another year, it was a board game for the family. Then, either lotions from boots sale (yup, I stocked up in January sales and saved for next year) or bottle of wine for the grown ups.

She always said her kids were so excited to receive something from the mindee, and it was always appreciated.

I always give an Amazon gift-card & a big box of chocs

My favourite things to recieve from mindees are a homemade card, ornament for my tree (so i think it them every year), or a voucher for amazon, elc etc.

I love a nice plant/bunch of flowers, a bottle of wine, one yr I had £40 gift voucher from m&s which was wonderfully generous, it brought us and our Christmas guests loads of posh cheeses and buffet food!!

I was going to buy mine a nice cat kidston apron and her husband some gardening gloves. They are a little bit older and her husband diabetic so bit of a no go with treats etc.
We have made some pretty saltdough ornaments too which were super easy and cheap, plus dd got to help :)

We did vouchers for a meal out.

Our childminder is amazing - so flexible, lovely and reasonably priced. We always get her a voucher for somewhere nice to eat in our local town. Enough for her and her husband to have a proper meal, not put it towards something else so it actually ends up costing her money. We have done Pizza Express, a posh cream tea, and I will probably do something similar again this year with a bottle of wine.